{"id":29899,"date":"2018-05-22T16:00:55","date_gmt":"2018-05-22T16:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=29899"},"modified":"2018-05-22T16:00:55","modified_gmt":"2018-05-22T16:00:55","slug":"no-need-to-vote-today-woo-hoo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=29899","title":{"rendered":"No need to vote today &#8230; woo hoo!"},"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\/2018\/05\/Elections.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-29900\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Elections-300x135.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"135\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Elections-300x135.png 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Elections.png 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Texans are voting today. Big deal, yes? Well, yeah, it is!<\/p>\n<p>I won&#8217;t be among them.<\/p>\n<p>Today is Election Runoff Day in Texas. Democrats are going to nominate someone to run against Republican Gov. Greg Abbott this fall: It&#8217;ll be either Andrew White (son of the late former Gov. Mark White) or Lupe Valdez (the former Dallas County sheriff).<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the deal: I didn&#8217;t vote in the Democratic primary in March. Given that I am registered to vote &#8212; <em>for now<\/em> &#8212; in Randall County, I chose to vote in the Republican primary. Randall County is the unofficial capital of Texas Republicanism.<\/p>\n<p>It was important for me to cast my vote for a key Texas legislative race, the contest for Senate Texas Senate District 31. I am happy with the result, which is that state Sen. Kel Seliger of Amarillo won the GOP nomination without a runoff against two primary opponents.<\/p>\n<p>The runoff is important. I know that it&#8217;s critical for candidates who must run a second time for their party&#8217;s nomination to get the vote out. Texans don&#8217;t vote in huge numbers anyway in these primary races; the numbers plummet even more for runoffs.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s to our state&#8217;s voters&#8217; shame.<\/p>\n<p>We vote often in Texas. Our state constitution gives us plenty of chances to exercise our rights as U.S. citizens, as Texans. We need to do better at performing that duty.<\/p>\n<p>Having said all that for the umpteenth time, I am glad to be sitting this one out.<\/p>\n<p>My plea to the rest of you? Get out and vote! It&#8217;s important, man! Really! It is!<\/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>Texans are voting today. Big deal, yes? Well, yeah, it is! I won&#8217;t be among them. Today is Election Runoff Day in Texas. Democrats are going to nominate someone to run against Republican Gov. Greg Abbott this fall: It&#8217;ll be either Andrew White (son of the late former Gov. Mark White) or Lupe Valdez (the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=29899\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">No need to vote today &#8230; woo hoo!<\/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":[14],"tags":[7781,6977,4622,4675],"class_list":["post-29899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-news","tag-kel-seliger-texas-senate","tag-runoff-elections","tag-texas-gop","tag-texas-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29899","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=29899"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29901,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29899\/revisions\/29901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}