It’s election day here in Rapid City, and somewhere right now you’re deciding whether the drive to your polling place is worth it. You’ve got that little voice going, “My vote doesn’t matter”. I’ve heard it too.

Let me tell you a few stories instead. History keeps embarrassing that voice, and the proof is weird.

George Washington Bought His Seat With a Bar Tab

Start with the man on the dollar bill. In 1755, a young George Washington ran for the Virginia House of Burgesses and got crushed, 40 votes to 271. He thought the town had too many taverns and refused to ply the locals with drink. The locals refused to vote for him.

He came back in 1758 ready. He rolled out 28 gallons of rum, 50 gallons of rum punch, 34 gallons of wine, 46 gallons of beer, and two gallons of cider royal, nearly enough for a half-gallon per voter. The barrels got wheeled right up to the polling places. He won.

The practice even had a name. They called it “swilling the planters with bumbo,” bumbo being a kind of rum. Buying a vote was technically illegal. Buying a round for a couple hundred of your closest friends, apparently fine.

The founders were handing out free liquor at the polls. Keep that in mind the next time somebody tells you the system used to be cleaner.

The “I Voted” Sticker Used to Be a Glass of Whiskey

That sticker on your shirt has a backstory. In the 1800s, voting wasn’t private, and towns turned election day into a blowout. One historian described it as the state fair, the Fourth of July, and Christmas crammed into a single afternoon.

The reward for showing up wasn’t a sticker. It was a drink. In 1860s New York City, a huge share of polling places sat inside saloons.

Some men grew “election beards” to prove they were finally old enough to vote. The sticker came much later. Free whiskey, then a beard, then a one-cent oval you peel off a sheet.

Your One Vote Has Decided Real Elections

Local races are where one vote bites hardest. Those are the seats that decide your roads, your schools, your property taxes, and they’re settled by tiny margins all the time. In 2017, a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates came down to a tie and got decided by drawing a name from a bowl.

Picture that on a town scale. Rapid City council races, county seats, ballot measures. When turnout drops, the gap between winning and losing shrinks to a handful of people who bothered to show up.

One Vote Has Picked the President

It scales all the way up. The presidency has turned on single deciding votes more than once, and 1824 is my favorite.

Nobody won a majority that year, so the decision went to the House of Representatives. Speaker Henry Clay threw his weight behind John Quincy Adams. Clay didn’t even like Adams. He liked Andrew Jackson less, and that was enough to hand a man the White House.

Missouri Elected a Dead Man to the Senate

I saved the strangest for last, and it’s recent enough that people who lived through it can still tell you about it.

The year is 2000. Missouri has a brutal Senate race between Republican incumbent John Ashcroft and Democratic Governor Mel Carnahan. Three weeks before the vote, Carnahan was killed in a plane crash along with his son and a top aide. 

It was too late to pull his name off the ballot, so Ashcroft was now running against a man who had passed away. Everyone figured that settled it. Oops.

Carnahan became the first, and so far only, deceased candidate to win election to the U.S. Senate. He beat Ashcroft by 48,960 votes. The new governor appointed Carnahan’s widow, Jean, to the seat, and she became the first woman to represent Missouri in the U.S. Senate. 

So, About That Drive to the Polls

Voting in South Dakota today is safe and private, and nobody’s going to hand you a glass of rum from a wagon to earn it (unfortunately). 

One vote has named senators, swung the presidency, and decided seats by a single ballot. Yours counts the same as everyone else’s. Polls are open. Go.