I made one protest vote this round. I voted for the Republican candidate for Congress in my district, against a Democrat who has been in office for 50 years (John Conyers). Conyers' wife was convicted of corruption a few years ago, and I figure after this long, he's probably corrupt, too. He usually gets >90% of the vote, so I figured why not throw the other guy a bone, even though I knew nothing about him (not even his name).
In 2010, Conyers had fewer votes than he had ever had. Wikipedia doesn't have the data for 2012. Next election, perhaps?
Yes, exactly. For example, here in Michigan, we have more Democrats than Republicans, but 2010 was a good Republican year. They therefore took over the state legislature before the new districts were drawn in 2011 (districts apportionment is based on the national census, which happens every 10 years; 2010 was the most recent one). So because of this one election cycle that was bad for Democrats, we have 13 Congresspeople, and 9 are Republicans, and it will be this way for 10 years. Here is a map of the districts near where I live.
Nice neat lines, eh? In the current election, Democrats got more votes than Republicans for Congress, but Republicans control the Congress by a large majority. Seems criminal at worst, undemocratic at least.