Tag Archives: voter turnout

local news

Just vote … dammit!

For far longer than I dare remember I have been using my journalistic platform to counsel voters to turn out in any election that gets thrown before them.

My main target are the stay-at-homers who decide that their vote in local elections doesn’t matter. So, they figure, why bother?

Sigh. Groan. Scream at the top of my lungs.

We’re going to vote on Nov. 7 in communities across North Texas. Princeton voters are going to elect members to their school district board of trustees as well as to their city council. What’s more, Princeton voters will be asked to fill two new council seats that the enactment of a home-rule charter requires of City Hall.

Exciting times, yes? Hah!

My hunch is that the Princeton turnout will be less than 10% of those who are registered to vote. As bad as that turnout could be, it dives even lower when you factor in those who could vote but don’t even bother to register to do so.

I’ve been covering local elections in Texas since the spring of 1984. Two municipal elections stand out as outliers to the usual trend of pitiful voter participation.

One of them occurred in 1984, when I first arrived in Beaumont. Voters there cast ballots on a measure to rename a major thoroughfare after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Sixteen years after the great man’s murder and the city still hadn’t taken action to honor him for his noble work seeking justice for all Americans.

The measure failed, but by just a few votes. The turnout, though, far exceeded the norm, as it attracted more than 20% of the city’s registered voters. City leaders crowed about the turnout, ignoring the fact that the vast majority of their constituents still didn’t cast ballots on an issue that had produced a firestorm of debate and discussion.

FYI, the Beaumont council eventually did act and created a parkway in Dr. King’s honor.

My second example tracks the action taken by another Texas city to sell its publicly owned hospital to a private, for-profit health care provider. Amarillo voters in 1996 squabbled mightily over whether to sell Northwest Texas Hospital to Universal Health Care Inc.

That referendum passed and the turnout stood about 30% of registered voters. Once again, city leaders did their share of chest-thumping over a turnout that still told me that nearly seven out of 10 voters stayed home.

Turnouts vary from city to city. They generally run in these municipal elections at around 6 to 8%. And yet, these elections have far greater tangible impact on us than elections for president or Congress.

What the hell? I have said in every way possible that local voters either can make these decisions themselves or they can leave these decisions to their neighbors who might share a totally different view of how to run City Hall than they do.

Good government has a long way to go to become relevant at the local level.

education news

Princeton ISD voters speak out, however …

I want to offer a tepid endorsement of the decision rendered this past weekend by voters who live in the Princeton Independent School District.

Those who bothered to vote have endorsed a $797 million bond issue to build several new campuses over the next decade. The amount of the bond issue is gigantic, but it is needed in light of the explosive growth that is occurring — and will continue — within the Princeton ISD.

That’s the good news, and it is very good news, indeed.

However, let’s examine something else. The final unofficial vote totals are, to put it simply, abysmal. Princeton ISD officials said that 597 votes were cast in support of the bond issue, compared to 302 votes cast against it. That’s a 66.4% to 33.6% difference. Not even close!

What drives me to the edge of nuttiness, though, is that local elections do not seem to gin up any interest. I don’t have any hard data on the eligible rolls of voters within the school district. The population of the school district is something a bit north of 20,000 residents. Of that total, my rule of thumb puts the number of eligible voters at about half.

So, if that estimate holds up, that puts the percentage of turnout at less than 9%.

I am compelled to ask whether, therefore, the 597 votes in favor of this bond issue constitute a “mandate.” It most assuredly doesn’t come close to a mandate.

What we have here is a case of a few people making decisions for others.

I long have been a champion for greater voter turnout as a way to spread the power throughout a large base. The turnout for Saturday’s critical bond issue invests far too much power in far too few Princeton ISD constituents.

Our democratic process works better when more of us take part.

Don’t misconstrue me on this point. I am delighted that the bond issue received the endorsement it got. The school system was transparent in developing the proposal. It made its recommendation in full public view.

I only wish more of us would have responded at the ballot box.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, political news

Democratic process is alive and thriving

We cast our ballots this morning for all the contests facing us in this midterm election, but I want to offer a brief immediate takeaway from what we noticed when we drove to our polling place.

We approached the Princeton (Texas) Community Center and noticed (a) a parking lot full of vehicles, (b) lots of signs extolling the virtues of candidates and issues and (c) a line at the polling station that was stretching out the door.

My thought? The democratic process is alive and well in our Collin County community.

I don’t know how many of our city of more than 20,000 residents voted early. I just was struck by the active Election Day participation we noticed this morning.

It gives me hope that our process will survive the onslaught it is enduring at the moment from those who seek to undermine it.

I am acutely aware that a momentary glimpse of a polling station doesn’t precisely qualify as a mountain of empirical evidence of what I have concluded.

I will accept it, though, as sufficient reason to have hope that our electoral process is working.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, political news

Most important election in history? Yep, this is it!

You hear it, without fail, every two years, that “this is the most important, most consequential election in our lifetime, if not in history!

It’s being bellowed and blustered again as the 2022 midterm election approaches. You know what? This one just might fit the bill, given what’s at stake and what could be the fate of the democratic system of government that we all say we cherish.

The importance of this year’s midterm election has its root in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. Donald Trump refused to concede that he lost to Joe Biden. Then came the 1/6 insurrection, the assault on our Capitol Building, the effort to stop the certification of the election results.

Trump continues to foment The Big Lie about “widespread voter fraud.” His lying has spawned a new category of candidates. We call them “election deniers.” They are running for seats in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives, for governorships, for secretary of state in many states where they serve as chief election officers.

They are running neck-and-neck in many states with “mainstream” candidates who want them defeated not just to protect their constituents from the lunacy they are promoting, but to protect our democratic system of government.

It’s the closeness of many of these contests including candidates who continue to deny the 2020 election result that simply boggles my noggin. The Pennsylvania U.S. Senate race, the race for Ohio’s U.S. Senate seat, the battle for the Senate seat in Georgia, campaigns for governor in Pennsylvania, Arizona and even in Texas.

The U.S. Senate is divided 50-50, but Democrats hold the edge — for the moment — because they have a vice president who can break tie votes. A swing of a seat or two in either direction means (a) that Republicans will take control and become even more obstructionist for the next two years of President Biden’s term or (b) that Democrats can gain something close to a governing majority and move on important legislation aimed at restoring some sort of balance of power.

It’s being said that a “presidential-year turnout” bodes well for Democratic candidates, and a “normal midterm election turnout” bodes well for Republican candidates.

Me? I am hoping for a huge turnout that rivals what we saw in 2020, with Joe Biden and Donald Trump together polling more than 155 million votes. It was a stunning turnout. It means that democracy is alive and well.

May it continue to show good health and vitality this year, too.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

political news, State news

Texas turnout: a stinker

Here is how the Texas Tribune led a story about the voter turnout in this week’s midterm primary election: Around 17% of registered voters in Texas cast a ballot in the 2022 primary, according to preliminary turnout data from the secretary of state. 

The Tribune noted also that the turnout this year was greater than the six previous midterm elections. However, I now will throw a huge dose of cold water on it.

The “registered voters” barometer is a ruse. When you factor in the number of Texans who are “eligible” to vote, but who don’t even bother to register, then the turnout nosedives into the crapper.

This is a shameful exhibition of apathy that spells potential disaster for the state of governance in Texas.

Texas, tragically, is among the lowest-turnout states in the entire U.S. of A. Seventeen percent of registered voters sought fit to cast their ballots, either early or on Election Day, to choose who their party’s nominees would be for a host of important public offices.

That is fewer than one in five Texans. The percentage plunges even more when you measure the turnout of eligible voters.

So very sad.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Ceding power to the few

Good job, Texas voters — or should I say “non-voters.” You appear headed to a new level of apathy, laced with ignorance.

The word we’re getting is that Primary Election Day 2022 is going to conclude after 7 p.m. with a single-digit turnout among Texas Republicans and Democrats. You know what that means, I am sure. I’ll remind those who need reminding what it means to me.

It means that rather than taking these important decisions seriously and taking care of issues by ourselves, many of us are going to leave those decisions to those they don’t know. Those who might harbor vastly different political philosophies than you do.

I long have said that good government works best when more of us take part in nominating and electing those who we deem fit to represent our interests in government. It works less well when we leave those decisions up to others.

To borrow a phrase from the Marine Corps, those of us who vote in these elections are “the few and the proud.” That’s fine if you are recruiting men and women to fight our battles; it’s not fine if we leave these decisions to someone else.

This is Round One of the 2022 election season. The Main Event will occur in November. That won’t produce any great shakes, either.

Abysmal, man. Just abysmal.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

State news

Low turnout on tap … oh, joy!

As if the Texas legislative Republican caucus needed reasons to suppress voter turnout in this state. Early indications from the state elections office tells us turnout for this year’s midterm primary election is going to typically abysmal.

As of this past Thursday, only 2.7% percent of eligible voters had cast their votes early.

Just so you know — as if you need reminding — we’re going to vote on a whole array of statewide offices. The governor’s contest is the main event. Texans so far are showing little interest in casting their votes in either party primary.

OK, just so you know: I am going to wait until Election Day to cast my votes. I detest early voting and since we will be around on March 1, we’ll vote on the day of the election.

I keep yapping about this every election cycle, so forgive me for repeating myself.

I am weary of reading about hideously low voter turnout in this state. We’re likely to have single-digit percentage turnouts in both party primaries. That’s ridiculous, as in the cause for ridicule. Do you get my drift? People around the world are dying for the chance to vote. We get the chance to cast our ballots to have a tangible voice in what our government should do on our behalf, and we look the other way.

We leave these decisions to the folks next door, or to the strangers at the grocery store, or the guy at the other end of the church pew.

That isn’t how representative democracy is supposed to work.

I do not want to get the government that the other guy chooses.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, national news, political news

Why the disinterest?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

An earlier post on this blog saluted the “courtesy” that Princeton City Hall gave to its residents with a significant credit in their monthly water bill.

I intended to call attention to local governments’ ability to respond to taxpayers’ needs in time of suffering. Princeton answered the call.

Now, for my point: It is that government at the local level often is the most responsive and its actions have the most direct impact on citizens’ lives. Thus, it baffles me that local government elections usually draw such little attention among voters.

Local government responds | High Plains Blogger

You know what I’m talking about. Voter turnout for municipal elections often languishes in the single digits. That is, fewer than 10 percent of those who are registered to vote bother to actually vote. I have witnessed this astonishing apathy play out over and over again during by 37 years as a daily print journalist. I watched it happen in Oregon City, Ore., in Beaumont, Texas, and in Amarillo, Texas, where I worked before retiring and moving to Princeton. It’s happened here, too.

Texas is going to the polls again on May 1. We will choose our city government and school district elected leaders. Will many of us even bother to vote? Hah! I am not holding my breath.

And that is the ongoing shame of our democratic process.

The 2020 presidential election produced an astonishing turnout among registered voters, something on the order of 65 percent. The raw numbers of voters, more than 158 million, also was staggering. Don’t misunderstand me. Presidential elections are important as well. However, presidents and those we send to Congress make decisions that occasionally have little to do with our daily lives.

City council members decide how much property taxes we pay; they make decisions on the quality of police and fire protection, on our parks, whether we have streets lights in our neighborhoods and, yes, whether we have potable running water. School board trustees decide how much to pay public school teachers, which has a direct impact on our property taxes, the books our children and grandchildren read, the curriculum they study.

I am not suggesting we should treat national elections with the apathy we demonstrate at the local level. I am suggesting that local races deserve at least as much of our attention as those elections farther up the electoral pecking order.

State news

Texas in the presidential mix … who knew?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It’s so nice to see the nation talking positively about Texas, which — to be candid — isn’t usually the case in this modern world.

We usually find ourselves on the front pages when there’s a mass shooting at a church, shopping mall or a school; or when the state’s Republican Party hierarchy doesn’t something stupid.

These days, Texas is the talk of the nation. Why? Because we are setting the early-voting pace that other states are trying to match.

I saw a report tonight that said Texans have cast nearly 86 percent of all the ballots we cast in the 2016 election. We still have two days to go before the end of early voting; plus, we have Election Day balloting.

What does this mean? It could mean that Texas will be among the leaders in voter turnout when we count all the presidential election ballots rather than among the worst-performing states.

This is good news at any level I can imagine.

I said for years when I was writing opinion pieces for newspapers in Amarillo and Beaumont that one of the keys to good government must be vast voter participation. I used to caution residents of both communities about the danger of letting others make key political decisions for them; they might not share your views, I would say.

It looks for all the world that in Texas, as well as in many states, that voters are taking these get-out-the-vote pleas quite seriously.

It fills me with pride to hear the media talk about Texas’s pace-setting early vote totals in tones that suggest that other states should emulate what we are doing here.

State news

Big voter roll in Texas? Will they turn out?

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I understand Texas set a record for registered voters, with 17 million Texans now eligible to vote in the 2020 election.

Good deal, yes? Of course it is!

Except for this little factoid: Texas historically has been one of the worst-performing states in the Union with respect to voter participation.

Our state turnout generally registers below the national average, which in itself isn’t great. Something like 60 percent of Americans voted for president in 2016. The Texas turnout was less than 50 percent.

We are getting a major push most from Democrats to “vote!” They want more of us to take part to defeat Donald Trump, boot him out of the White House and end this ridiculous experiment of electing an ostensible non-politician to the nation’s highest political office.

It’s good to know we have managed to register a lot of folks to vote for president this year and beyond. That’s only part of the story.

The more important chapter will be written if all 17 million of us turn out to vote. That won’t happen, but it would be gratifying to see us get somewhere close to that mark.