I detest straight-party voting.

You know what it is, right? It’s that place on the ballot that enables people to vote for every candidate of a particular party. One punch of the ballot and voters can walk away from the polling booth … no muss, no fuss.

It’s a profoundly lazy way to vote. Texas allows voters to cast their ballots that way. My take on it is that the Legislature needs to change the law.

I want to stipulate that my loathing of straight-party voting in Texas has nothing – well, almost nothing – to do with the state’s heavy Republican leanings. I’d hate this style of voting even if the state leaned just as heavily toward the Democratic Party. But I didn’t arrive in Texas until the spring of 1984, by which time the state’s shift from Democratic to Republican dominance was well underway.

Here’s my version of a perfect electoral world in Texas: Make voters go down the ballot, which can be lengthy, and cast their vote one race at a time. If they choose to select all candidates of one party, they are free to do so. But the generous ticket-splitters will judge each contest on the quality of the candidates seeking that particular office.

It also must be noted that Texas election law has this curious provision that enables voters to punch the straight-party spot on the ballot while allowing them to vote for individual candidates from the other party. Why allow the straight-party provision in the first place if voters have the power to override their straight-ticket choice?

Many voters in Potter and Randall counties, sadly, still like to vote for the party rather than for the candidate. And in this Republican-red region of a Republican-red state, the GOP benefits the most from this form of ballot-casting. We’ll see a good bit of it once again when the polls open next Tuesday.

Will the 2013 Legislature do the right thing and end this practice of straight-party voting? Probably not. The Texas Legislature is dominated by Republican lawmakers who are quite unlikely to cut their own party’s political throat by requiring Texans to take a moment to think before casting their vote.