The first questions

Washington -- the first president?

There's a deceptively sensible claim going around the web: Washington wasn't really the first president, because someone had to be president during the Revolutionary War, right? Well, no. Someone should have been president, but under the Articles of Confederation, which we used from 1781 to 1788, there was no strong executive branch, and barely anything at all worthy of the name. There was the title "President of the United States in Congress Assembled", but that job consisted of presiding over Congress itself, and lasted for only one year. No official before George Washington had the title of President of the United States, the responsibilities, or the powers. Claiming that Hancock (the most famous of the Congressional presidents) or Peyton Randolph (the first one) was President is inaccurate, using the strict interpretation of the word, and flat-out wrong, with the common understanding thereof.

State of Franklin

With the proposed division of California in the news, not that it's going to happen, some of the other proposed states come to mind. Franklin, for example, was made up of a western chunk of North Carolina, which was offered by the state to the federal government to pay for Revolutionary war debts. The arrangement got messed up, as was not uncommon in the days before we really got the country running smoothly and there was any way to communicate across great distance efficiently. Pretty soon, the residents of the region proposed that it become its own state, and named it in honor of Ben Franklin. They got fairly well organized, with leadership of the legislature and a governor elected, but when the Continental Congress couldn't muster a 2/3 majority vote to admit Frankland (as it was initially called), that was the beginning of the end. Raleigh got its act together and told the Franklinites that it wasn't going to happen, and eventually the area was ceded for good, and in 1796 became eastern Tennessee.

one vote matters?

Really, does one vote matter? After all, even in most town council races you have a few hundred being cast, and for the House of Representatives, you could easily have two hundred thousand. And yeah, statistically, one vote is extremely unlikely to be the difference between two candidates. Even a family would be hard-pressed to push someone over the top. One vote is a very small thing. So is one pint of blood donated, one child fed, housed, and clothed, one plastic bottle recycled, one tree planted. Voting is how we make democracy, and it takes a lot of people to do it.

Lame ducks

The term "lame duck" originally came from English finance in the 18th century, used to describe a stockbroker who defaulted on his debts. It took a while to come across the pond, but soon came to refer to a politician who was nearing the end of his last term, by either defeat or retirement. While a new Congress is elected in November of every even year, until 1933 they would take the oath of office in March, and the old Congress, sometimes with a different party in power, would nevertheless sit from December to February. That was and still is called a lame-duck session. Presidents are typically referred to as lame ducks after their second midterm, since there will be no more elections affecting their job. And yes, it is kind of a silly name, but there's a lot sillier than that in the world of politics.