Does your vote matter in Virginia?

By Nathan Skates / Friday, May 8, 2020

Founding father Samuel Adams once said, “Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote…that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country.”

Despite the solemnity of this responsibility, how many times have you heard someone say that their vote doesn’t matter? “It’s just one vote” they say. Or perhaps you’ve felt this way and stayed home one election day. In a nation of over 300 million people, such a sentiment is understandable but fallacious.

Each vote is of critical importance as seen in results such as Kentucky State Rep. Jim Glenn’s 2018 victory by one vote. Or take for instance Virginia State Rep. David Yancey, who won a tied race by having his name drawn from a bowl. While these examples are interesting, they fail to capture the importance of a person’s vote, because elections are more than a competition between candidates, they are life changing for millions of people; people both born and unborn.

A study in the importance of voting can be found in Virginia’s 2019 House of Delegates election and subsequent legislative session that took place only weeks ago. After solidifying control of the House of Delegates, State Senate, and Governor’s office, Virginia Democrats have unleashed a wave of policies that might make Californians blush. In the recent legislative session, Democrats passed bills that:

require insurance providers to pay for gender transitions
prohibit “conversion therapy” to counsel those struggling with thoughts of same-sex attraction
force schools to further accommodate transgender students
prevent employers (including faith-based) from making hiring decisions based on sexual orientation or gender identity
deem abortion a fundamental right
and expand who can perform an abortion while decreasing the information they must provide to a woman making possibly the most critical decision of her life. Don’t worry, the legislature did factor in the approximately $1,000 loss in revenue to the state in their impact statement, if not the many lives that would be taken.
Democrats also nearly added Virginia to the Popular Vote Compact meaning that cities like Los Angeles have more power than entire states

These are just a few examples of the multitude of bills passed by a Democrat majority. The party, and Governor Northam in particular, have been emboldened not only by their recent victories, but by Northam’s survival of two political scandals no politician should have been able to weather. The more damaging should have been Northam’s ghastly calm as he divulged support for taking a human baby, born alive, “making it comfortable” and then allowing the mother and doctors to decide to murder the child. In a sane world, that would have been the end of his political career. Instead it is the very thing that enabled him to survive the next scandal, the surfacing of an old photograph of Northam wearing “blackface”.

Governor Northam however, got a pass from the media. All that was required was an apology, an apology he has since withdrawn. Now he and the Democrats are busy reshaping the state, all while scolding the right for clinging to their guns and for daring to leave their homes.

So what is your recourse? How can you stand up to those in power, and what can one person do? You can vote! You can get your friends and family to the polls to vote. You can volunteer to support the campaigns of candidates who will defend Christian liberties. Dare I say you could even run for office; many Democrats ran unopposed in the previous legislative election in Virginia. It is imperative that Christians vote each time they have the opportunity.

There’s an election coming up in November. If you start to doubt whether your vote matters, think about the aforementioned Rep. Yancey. One vote allowed Republicans to hold on to a slim majority in the House of Delegates and hold back the surge of leftist legislation for a little while longer.