Lori Falce: It's exhausting being a swing state voter

I’m a little tired of being this important.

That’s an understatement. I’m downright exhausted. I’m wrung out. I’m at my wit’s end.

And I know that I am not alone. You’re tired, too, right?

In Pennsylvania, we are accustomed to our perennial place in the landscape of presidential elections. We get it. We’re the homecoming queen. Our milkshake brings all the boys to the yard. And, by milkshake, we of course mean electoral votes, and, by boys, we of course mean presidential candidates.

But come on, people. We’re drowning here.

Every day brings another visit by Donald Trump or Kamala Harris or running mates JD Vance and Tim Walz. Sometimes they come in pairs. Sometimes they come alone. Sometimes you have surrogates such as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, D-Mich., or U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla. Sometimes you’ve got Republicans on one end of the state and Democrats on the other.

It’s just, well … it’s a lot.

I have a friend from New York who is delighted to be ignored. She’s got enough to deal with — her mayor has been indicted.

My family in Ohio live just spitting distance from Springfield, so they have their own election-induced trauma to endure.

So does my Minnesotan side, as Walz has inspired everyone to pay attention to the Land of 10,000 Lakes for the first time since Walter Mondale ran against Ronald Reagan. For the record, yes, we eat hot dish and, no, we’re not that polite. “Minnesota nice” is akin to a Southern woman saying “bless your heart.” It’s a fist in a velvet glove.

I sometimes romanticize what it must be like to live in a state that is bolted firmly in one column or the other. What is it like to not swing from party to party in an election year? What would it be like to live in Alabama or California? Oh, sure, Alabama picked Jimmy Carter in 1976, and California used to be red back in the Richard Nixon and Reagan days. But not anymore.

What is it like to have a presidential election visit be an anomaly? What is it like to have the parties decide not to waste advertising dollars in your markets in the last month of the race because everyone knows what the outcome is going to be?

But then my friend summed it up.

“There are plus sides to not having my vote count at all.”

That’s the trade-off. No one makes a case to the voters in party strongholds such as Arkansas and Hawaii. Sure, there might be brief stops in Idaho and Vermont, but not an all-out push to change hearts and minds. People care about Iowa and New Hampshire in the primaries; by the conventions, they are all but forgotten.

In Pennsylvania, every vote counts. Not in the Schoolhouse Rock kind of after-school special way. Yes, every vote counts in every election every year. But, when it comes to electoral math, it’s easy to be discouraged if you aren’t in one of the seven states where the tallies are going to make all the difference.

And, as more than one pundit has pointed out, the electoral Holy Grail is the Keystone State.

That’s why the candidates and their surrogates are here. It’s why the ad money is keeping us drowning in messaging on TV and streaming services and radio. It’s everywhere, and we have another month of this to go.

This is the price we pay for being the voters likely to make the final call on Election Day. We actually are that important.

But it’s still exhausting.