There is a great grumble across the land concerning a brokered GOP convention this summer. The thinking goes that even if Donald Trump doesn’t receive enough votes to wrap up the nomination on the first ballot, he should be the party’s choice because he’s so far ahead of anyone else. (At least at this date.) And it’s not right that party leaders would disregard his constituents. They’re saying that if Trump isn’t nominated, they will have been disenfranchised.
Actually, being disenfranchised means” not being permitted to vote”. It doesn’t mean “having your vote ignored.” This is probably hair-splitting for the group I’m discussing; but it’s valid, especially for the eight states that have winner-take-all primaries. Marco Rubio hoped this would work to his advantage in Florida; it didn’t. For John Kasich, it did in Ohio.
The thing is that voters in winner-take-all states who don’t vote for the candidate who eventually wins the night have their votes effectively ignored then and there. And since there are fifty state primaries with each state making its own rules, voters are regularly going to the polls and having their choices discounted.
Perhaps the ultimate example is a Presidential election. It doesn’t matter if it’s close or not, in the end those who didn’t vote for the winner suck it up. Quite possibly they grumble for four years, but they seem to understand that they were not technically disenfranchised. Their candidate simply lost in the end.
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