{"id":26986,"date":"2017-12-20T03:19:23","date_gmt":"2017-12-20T03:19:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=26986"},"modified":"2017-12-20T03:19:23","modified_gmt":"2017-12-20T03:19:23","slug":"every-vote-counts-in-a-big-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=26986","title":{"rendered":"Every vote counts &#8230; in a big way!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/recount.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-26988\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/recount-300x298.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"298\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/recount-300x298.png 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/recount-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/recount.png 360w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Just when you thought your vote didn&#8217;t count &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Get a load of what happened in Virginia.<\/p>\n<p>That state&#8217;s House of Delegates has flipped from Republican control to a 50-50 partisan deadlock on the basis of a single vote in a race for one of the delegate seats.<\/p>\n<p>Incumbent Delegate David Yancey, a Republican, held a 10-vote lead in the race for his seat against Democrat Shelly Simonds. So they launched a recount as required under state law. They counted the ballots and Simonds has emerged the winner &#8212; by a single ballot. Simonds won with 11,608 votes to Yancey&#8217;s 11,607.<\/p>\n<p>The GOP held a 51-49 majority in the House of Delegates. It&#8217;s now 50-50, or at least it will be when they certify the result of the recount. Virginia has no tie-breaking process in its House of Delegates. If one should occur on a piece of legislation, there needs to be some sort of power-sharing arrangement that the two parties will need to work out.<\/p>\n<p>There is a huge lesson here. I&#8217;ve heard gripes over many years covering elections as a journalist from those who say &#8220;Why vote? My vote doesn&#8217;t matter. It doesn&#8217;t count.&#8221; These bystanders leave critical public policy decisions to others.<\/p>\n<p>Locally, here in Amarillo, dismal voter turnouts long ago became the norm, to the voting public&#8217;s ever-lasting shame.<\/p>\n<p>Does your vote matter? Does it count?<\/p>\n<p>Uh, yeah. It does. In a major way. The balance of power in one of our states has just flipped because of a single ballot.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just when you thought your vote didn&#8217;t count &#8230; Get a load of what happened in Virginia. That state&#8217;s House of Delegates has flipped from Republican control to a 50-50 partisan deadlock on the basis of a single vote in a race for one of the delegate seats. Incumbent Delegate David Yancey, a Republican, held &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=26986\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Every vote counts &#8230; in a big way!<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,13,14],"tags":[1550,7481,5137],"class_list":["post-26986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-elections","tag-recounts","tag-voter-turnout"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26986"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26989,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26986\/revisions\/26989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}