I'm beginning to think you don't understand how the Electoral College works, but maybe Montana wasn't the best example.
Pointless for the purpose of electing a President. The odds of Montana casting any of its electoral votes for a Democratic candidate are so low that it is essentially impossible for an individual Montanan voting for a Democratic Presidential candidate to have any actual impact on the result. Compare this to a Floridian, or even a Virginian.
Now, Montana isn't nearly as Republican-leaning a state as, say, Arizona has been recently. Montana has a Democratic governor and has elected two Democrats to the Senate. However, we've been two very reliable electoral votes in the Republican column for decades now, and that shows no sign of changing.
So, statistically, a Montanan voting for a Democratic Presidential candidate is throwing their vote away in a very real sense. However, they can still cast an efficacious ballot for two Senators, a Representative, a Governor, and other state-level offices, not to mention voting on referenda. A way to make up for lost influence is to, as I said, support a special interest group in addition to voting.
You're missing my point. Remember that my OP was that people do not understand why they vote. Or, to put it in terms of my most recent question, they do not know what the purpose of voting is. They just know that they're supposed to make an informed choice and this choice has some vague connection to current events and this is the extent of their civic duty.
You seem to believe that the purpose of voting for the POTUS is to elect the President.
This is wrong. The purpose of participating in the national election is not to "pick the best choice". It is to make a decision and to express an opinion.
The purpose of voting for the POTUS is to provide a signal to your electoral college delegates, and to provide a signal for the mood of the nation. In the case you describe, it's like submitting a minority opinion on the SCOTUS. The point is to be on record with your opinion, not to be the Important Guy Whose Vote Makes the Difference. It's to say, "Yes, we decided on Obama, but a huge portion of the country would have preferred Romney for one reason or another," or vice versa.
If your opinion happens to coincide with a majority as filtered through the electoral college, then your opinion happens to coincide with the result of an aggregate decision machine. You are not The Decider. There is no Decider. That is the point of a democracy: no single vote can, or should, ever count.
