Why voting matters: Supreme Court edition

The following article was posted on the Axios website June 28, 2018:

Credit: Robert Alexander, Getty Images

A shift of fewer than 80,000 votes in three states (Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) — or 0.06% of 137 million cast — would not just have made Hillary Clinton president.

The bottom line: Perhaps even more important for the long run, a young liberal Supreme Court might have ruled on America for a generation.<

The WashPost’s Philip Bump did the math about Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin back during the transition:

  • “Trump won those states by 0.2, 0.7 and 0.8 percentage points, respectively — and by 10,704, 46,765 and 22,177 votes. Those three wins gave him 46 electoral votes; if Clinton had done one point better in each state, she’d have won the electoral vote, too.”
  • “But for 79,646 votes cast in those three states, she’d be the next president of the United States.”
  • P.S. “The 540-vote margin in Florida that swung the 2000 election is still the modern record-holder for close races.”

How it’s playing, via CNN “Reliable Sources” newsletter:

  • “CNN chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin[:] ‘Abortion will be illegal in a significant part of the United States in 18 months … Roe v. Wade is doomed.’ And the Daily News was blunt on its front page: ‘We Are F*#%’D.'”