{"id":44924,"date":"2020-10-29T01:01:37","date_gmt":"2020-10-29T01:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=44924"},"modified":"2020-10-29T01:01:37","modified_gmt":"2020-10-29T01:01:37","slug":"texas-in-the-presidential-mix-who-knew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=44924","title":{"rendered":"Texas in the presidential mix … who knew?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By JOHN KANELIS \/ johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

It’s so nice to see the nation talking positively<\/em> about Texas, which — to be candid — isn’t usually the case in this modern world.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I saw a report tonight that said Texans have cast nearly 86 percent of all<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

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

This is good news at any level I can imagine.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n\n

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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 … Continue reading Texas in the presidential mix … who knew?<\/span> →<\/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":[18],"tags":[7225,1496,5137],"class_list":["post-44924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-state-news","tag-2020-election","tag-early-voting","tag-voter-turnout"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44924","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=44924"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44925,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44924\/revisions\/44925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}