In a comment to a previous post, a user stated that voting in this election was more important than ever. I replied by basically saying that do to the electoral college, my vote means very little (here). This post is to justify my reasoning for not voting in Presidential Elections.

The Electoral College, put into place 221 years ago, chooses the President and Vice-President of the United States of America, not the public. The public vote is to choose the electoral for each state, however, those electoral's do not have to vote the way the people they represent vote. Basically, if your state votes for Candidate B, but the electoral member decides Candidate A is better than Candidate B, he can still vote for Candidate A. That's not very democratic, if you ask me. It has happened 3 times in the past, 1876 (Rutherford B. Hayes loses the popular vote to Samuel J. Tilden, wins the Electoral and the Presidency), 1888 (Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland) and, one we're all familiar with, the 2000 Presidential Election (George W. Bush and Al Gore).

With technology as it is now, there is no reason this system should still remain in place. Counting ballots over such a vast region by mail would have taken a long time, now, everything is electronic and almost instantaneous. The public is much better educated than it was 200+ years ago and are affected much more by Presidential elections than they were 200 years ago, their voice should count as more than just a suggestion. So, until this system is removed, my voice will remain as it is now, just a voice in the crowd with little or no weight.

Reference Material
HowStuffWorks.com
Wikipedia.org
NARA Federal Register website