With millions of people voting (and millions more having already voted), the question looms large: Why vote? Let’s flip this around and ask a question I often hear as a rabbi: What value does one mitzvah have?

Why light candles this one Shabbat eve? Is there a point to saying the Shema once?

A habit-forming choice, a resolution to join a synagogue, deciding that “from now on I will only” or “from now on I will never,” these make logical sense. Strides on a journey, choices on a road of spiritual experience. But one mitzvah? It almost sounds like deciding to diet for a single day.

Then it struck me: to do a mitzvah is to vote.

Walking into a polling booth, each person is permitted to vote for their candidate. Sometimes the voter is very informed, knowing exactly who they are voting for and why. But how many times have you gone in to vote, and after completing the top of the ballot with all the recognizable candidates, do you look further down and see PROP A, Y/N?

“Hmm,” I think to myself, “I’m an optimistic person. I guess I’ll vote YES because yes is a positive answer.” Next is a city tax law, with little to no information as to the details. Do you know what choice you are making? Maybe you vote, maybe you don’t. But if you do, well, it counts.

Now, how valuable is that randomly placed vote? One vote. How valuable is an informed vote? One vote. And what’s the value of a vote? The whole democracy rests on it. Pretty valuable indeed.

One vote can tip the scale in an election. In local or statewide elections, that is a fact. And that’s huge. A vote is very, very valuable.

And yet, each person can only have one vote. A governor, a senator, and an 18-year-old all have just one vote.

So a vote has two sides of value. On the one hand, a huge and almost infinite value, a value powerful enough to change a society, powerful enough to make or break a democracy. And on the other, so terribly finite and measured, down to the singular existence of each voter. A single infinite vote.

Does it make a difference how these votes were cast? It does not. A vote can be made with full knowledge of both sides of the issue, a decision. Or a vote can be a shot in the dark. In either scenario, that vote carries with it the full weight and ramifications of the single infinite vote.

Each mitzvah is a vote. A vote for goodness, for G‑dliness, a vote for tradition and continuity and community, a vote for holiness and a better brighter world.

Go out and vote. Go out and do a mitzvah.

And like a vote, a mitzvah can be cast with decisive knowledge or in passing impulse. With full seriousness or with careless frivolity. Like a vote, it still counts.

Like a vote, you can show up for the first time in 10 years and it still works. Doesn’t get rusty or stale.

And like a vote, you should make sure to be there to cast every one you have.

One of the many interesting studies done on the recent election cycles discovered that the millions of dollars spent on ads across TV and the Internet didn’t change many people’s opinions. Most of the ads were not even meant to move people from one political side to the other. They were created to get people to vote. The side that could get people off the couches and into the voting booths was the side that swung the election.

And that’s because they realize that as long as people vote, informed or not, rightly or wrongly cast, their votes count.

Like the super-high-value, super-low-value, single infinite vote, the super-high-value, super-low-value, single infinite mitzvah is independent of any previous or subsequent actions.

A mitzvah done with or without intention, whether in a string of other mitzvahs or alone on a corner, each mitzvah is a vote. A vote for love, a vote for G‑d.

Vote for Judaism! Lets us take up our right, our privilege, our gift and cast our mitzvah vote of holiness.

And in this never-ending cycle of voting for good, let us look to inform our vote. Explore, examine, and think, about the traditions, the values and reasons behind each mitzvah. Cast your mitzvah with confidence and knowledge.

And don’t forget to vote ...