If you had a winning lottery ticket would you keep it in hand dreaming of all the things you could buy or do with the money or, would you be sure to redeem the ticket before the deadline so that you could actually receive the money?
A similar choice exists with elections.
We all have a big stake in the direction of government at every level from safety from crime to how much of our hard-earned money governments take from us, yet thousands locally and millions statewide never redeem their right to have a say by casting their vote.
Many among us who do pay attention to, and care about politics, government policy, and preservation of our liberties make terrible assumptions that their votes are not important most often because statistical polling has predicted a candidate or political party is going to win.
Your opinion, no matter how loudly or meekly expressed, is not your vote.
Your opinion, no matter how loudly or meekly expressed, is not your vote. Neither is polling data presented in the media or by campaigns an official election tally sheet.
There two ballot related items to remember in Texas this General Election in Texas:
First, there is no straight ticket voting which means you need to cast votes from the beginning to the end of the ballot to ensure the better candidates win. Vote the full ballot.
Texas’ largest county, and third largest in the country, Harris, is now led by a radical Leftist and has, because of her unexpected election, a liberal Democrat majority running the it. Those officials have proven dedicated to passing massive tax increases, growing government, and increasing corruption in everything from contracting to their infamous 2020 election shenanigans all as a result of that unpredicted election.
The Harris County Judge race was way down in the middle of a very long ballot in 2018 which saw huge numbers of voters not bother to cast votes beyond the top portion. Leftist Lina Hidalgo had run unopposed in the earlier Democrat Primary not because she was a known Democrat star but because even Harris County Democrats did not expect to have a chance to win the office of county judge against longtime incumbent Ed Emmett. To that point Hidalgo’s career experience was working as a Spanish-English medical interpreter with the Texas Medical Center and with the Leftist Texas Civil Rights Project.
Millions of people want or expect a particular outcome on Election Day but for a variety of reasons never cast their vote.
The second thing, and it is new this year and relates to those super long ballots in giant population counties, is that unopposed races will not appear in such a way that you can cast a vote for those officials (or specifically withhold a vote to show your dissatisfaction.) Unopposed office holders will appear in a large list at the bottom of the General Election ballot presented as having been certified as elected.
I believe this change in election law by the legislature to be wrong for many reasons I will not list here. It appears that the motivation for this little discussed change is to help shorten the voting portion of ballots.
The end of straight party ticket voting and the move to not casting votes in unopposed races are both designed so that voters will be more likely to vote a full ballot.
As to the candidates in this election, unless you want even higher taxes; bigger state and local government mandating this and that for you and your business, and; officials supporting our lawless open borders importing millions of aliens into our state outside of a safe, orderly, and legal process, you need to vote for the Republican Party nominee in every spot from the top to the bottom of your ballot. Not all the Republicans are great conservative champions but I know of no Democrats who will govern or vote better; they’d be Republicans if they were not Leftists.
Statewide Republicans have a general advantage over Democrats of 4 to 8 percent but that advantage only comes into play when voters who will support Republican nominees actually submit a voted ballot. The political term for this is “election turnout” and whichever movement turns out more of its supporters in the actual election, not in pre-election poll, wins.
…not getting your vote placed is about as self-defeating as dreaming about all you’ll do with a winning lottery ticket but not bothering to redeem that ticket before the deadline at which it becomes worthless.
Despite the deep desire to win the lottery held by so many, there are regularly unclaimed winning tickets and so it is with elections. Millions of people want or expect a particular outcome on Election Day but for a variety of reasons never cast their vote. Experience has shown us that many wrongly act as if polling results were the same as election results and decide not to take the time needed to cast a vote.
Poll results are simply statistical samples which try, sometimes poorly, to predict an outcome of the whole electorate. The fact that some polls end up so wrong is a reminder that the only thing that matters are votes cast by voters in the actual election.
With absentee voting, two weeks of in person voting, and polls open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Election Day, Tuesday, November 8, 2022, not getting your vote placed is about as self-defeating as dreaming about all you’ll do with a winning lottery ticket but not bothering to redeem that ticket before the deadline at which it becomes worthless.
Vote! Polling results are not election results
A similar choice exists with elections.
We all have a big stake in the direction of government at every level from safety from crime to how much of our hard-earned money governments take from us, yet thousands locally and millions statewide never redeem their right to have a say by casting their vote.
Many among us who do pay attention to, and care about politics, government policy, and preservation of our liberties make terrible assumptions that their votes are not important most often because statistical polling has predicted a candidate or political party is going to win.
Your opinion, no matter how loudly or meekly expressed, is not your vote.
Your opinion, no matter how loudly or meekly expressed, is not your vote. Neither is polling data presented in the media or by campaigns an official election tally sheet.
There two ballot related items to remember in Texas this General Election in Texas:
First, there is no straight ticket voting which means you need to cast votes from the beginning to the end of the ballot to ensure the better candidates win. Vote the full ballot.
Texas’ largest county, and third largest in the country, Harris, is now led by a radical Leftist and has, because of her unexpected election, a liberal Democrat majority running the it. Those officials have proven dedicated to passing massive tax increases, growing government, and increasing corruption in everything from contracting to their infamous 2020 election shenanigans all as a result of that unpredicted election.
The Harris County Judge race was way down in the middle of a very long ballot in 2018 which saw huge numbers of voters not bother to cast votes beyond the top portion. Leftist Lina Hidalgo had run unopposed in the earlier Democrat Primary not because she was a known Democrat star but because even Harris County Democrats did not expect to have a chance to win the office of county judge against longtime incumbent Ed Emmett. To that point Hidalgo’s career experience was working as a Spanish-English medical interpreter with the Texas Medical Center and with the Leftist Texas Civil Rights Project.
Millions of people want or expect a particular outcome on Election Day but for a variety of reasons never cast their vote.
The second thing, and it is new this year and relates to those super long ballots in giant population counties, is that unopposed races will not appear in such a way that you can cast a vote for those officials (or specifically withhold a vote to show your dissatisfaction.) Unopposed office holders will appear in a large list at the bottom of the General Election ballot presented as having been certified as elected.
I believe this change in election law by the legislature to be wrong for many reasons I will not list here. It appears that the motivation for this little discussed change is to help shorten the voting portion of ballots.
As to the candidates in this election, unless you want even higher taxes; bigger state and local government mandating this and that for you and your business, and; officials supporting our lawless open borders importing millions of aliens into our state outside of a safe, orderly, and legal process, you need to vote for the Republican Party nominee in every spot from the top to the bottom of your ballot. Not all the Republicans are great conservative champions but I know of no Democrats who will govern or vote better; they’d be Republicans if they were not Leftists.
Statewide Republicans have a general advantage over Democrats of 4 to 8 percent but that advantage only comes into play when voters who will support Republican nominees actually submit a voted ballot. The political term for this is “election turnout” and whichever movement turns out more of its supporters in the actual election, not in pre-election poll, wins.
…not getting your vote placed is about as self-defeating as dreaming about all you’ll do with a winning lottery ticket but not bothering to redeem that ticket before the deadline at which it becomes worthless.
Despite the deep desire to win the lottery held by so many, there are regularly unclaimed winning tickets and so it is with elections. Millions of people want or expect a particular outcome on Election Day but for a variety of reasons never cast their vote. Experience has shown us that many wrongly act as if polling results were the same as election results and decide not to take the time needed to cast a vote.
Poll results are simply statistical samples which try, sometimes poorly, to predict an outcome of the whole electorate. The fact that some polls end up so wrong is a reminder that the only thing that matters are votes cast by voters in the actual election.
With absentee voting, two weeks of in person voting, and polls open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Election Day, Tuesday, November 8, 2022, not getting your vote placed is about as self-defeating as dreaming about all you’ll do with a winning lottery ticket but not bothering to redeem that ticket before the deadline at which it becomes worthless.
This column was originally published in the Buffalo Gap Round-Up News, October 2022 edition.