There is a seeming paradox when it comes to voting. Sometimes people decide not to vote for whatever reason, perhaps even laziness, rationalizing their decision by arguing that a single vote will not sway an election. And that is of course true in the sense that almost all major elections are decided by more than one vote and hence no one’s particular vote will be the decider. The reason to vote is because if enough people on one side of an issue or candidate thought and acted that same way, the other side would win. So even if the eventual margin of victory is more than one vote, each person’s vote matters and hence the frequent exhortation ‘every vote counts’.
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In the November 2017 issue of Harper’s magazine, Dala Maharidge recounts a story.

In the summer of 1919, the U.S. Army wanted to see if it was possible to move tanks and trucks from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco, a distance of 3,251 miles. More than half the route was dirt track. Slowed by sand and “gumbo mud,” the convoy managed an average speed of 6.07 miles per hour. The journey took two months. A young lieutenant colonel named Dwight D. Eisenhower was on the mission; it made him a lifelong advocate for good roads.

After Eisenhower became president, he signed the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, which established funding for what became known as the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Thus began decades of work on the 42,000-mile system, which was declared finished only on October 14, 1992, with the completion of a section of I-70 in the Colorado Rockies.

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New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand has been out in front on the sexual abuse issue and called for Donald Trump to resign because of the charges that sixteen women have leveled against his disgusting behavior. Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii then came out with an even stronger statement, saying “The only way to stop this president who has a narcissistic need for attention, he’s a misogynist and admitted sexual predator and a liar. The only thing that will stop him from attacking us—because nobody is safe—is his resignation.”
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As I said, it is unwise to draw sweeping conclusions from the shocking win by Democrat Doug Jones over Republican Roy Moore in the senate race in the deep red state of Alabama. It may well be that that election was sui generis because of the extreme views of Moore and the sexual abuse allegations against him and the revelations of his creepy obsession with teenage girls..
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The late great comedian George Carlin had a funny routine about the seven words that you could not tell on television. (Language advisory, obviously)

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