Think Big When You Vote

Texas is one of 24 states that does NOT have a means for voters to petition for a ballot referendum. Furthermore, while Texas, like all other states except Delaware, DOES require voter ballot approval of all constitutional amendments, Texas is one of the 18 states that allow no other form of initiative, referendum, or recall. (Source: National Council of State Legislatures) Thus, no amount of voter signatures could trigger a statewide vote in Texas on things like legalizing marijuana, or changing the way electoral districts are apportioned, or recalling any elected official. (Could the threat of recall, for example, have made our Attorney General think twice before associating himself with a certain real estate developer and helped the state avoid the circus of an impeachment and trial that cost Texans over 4 million tax dollars?)

What’s the even bigger consequence here for Texans? We are surely more at the mercy of influential lobbying groups, more subject to enormous corporate and individual campaign contributions that sway legislative elections and subsequent legislative action, and thus to power-hungry politicians and their friends (many from out-of-state).

And when there is no threat that voters can overrule what legislators enact (unless it requires a constitutional amendment), and when legislators can refuse to act on matters that ought to be addressed (such as failing to act last year on public school funding), they do so with impunity. Only in the following election cycle can voters register their disapproval, but they must then do so district by district, making it much harder to bring about effectual change.

Ultimately, the result is a much lower voter turnout than otherwise. Texas has, since 1995, ranked in the lowest five among the 50 states and the District of Columbia for voter turnout in the November elections, and the turnout rate has been a full ten percent below the national average for the elections since 2000. (Source: Dr. Michael McDonald, U.S. Elections Project, Jan. 12, 2021) When voters believe their vote does not matter, they won’t go to the trouble to vote at all, much less educate themselves about HOW to vote, or even about WHAT ISSUES matter to them. They shrug their shoulders and go on about their lives. Some of them may complain about government, or about problems that some level of government ought to be addressing for them, but they are almost dead certain that casting a single vote in an election won’t matter one iota in their life.

This is why for those of us who ARE politically active, the issues we choose to focus on matter so much more than in other states. When smart, articulate, even perhaps economically privileged citizens choose to engage in very public campaigns, sometimes nearing vendettas, over matters that have minimal impact, instead of over matters that have so much broader possible consequences to the body politic, we are wasting precious resources.

I too am guilty of this, tending to focus on the immediate local, though sometimes trivial, matters (like whether there are enough handicap parking slots in places I frequent!), rather than the bigger matters that impact ALL of us.

The public attention span has always been notoriously short; rather than pour out our passion on very personal issues, about which we sometimes make mountains from what are to others only molehills, we ought to be thinking about broader consequences and how to assure that the so-called “one man: one vote” mantra could be better brought to bear, thus helping to inspire those voters who do NOT exercise their right to vote.

With greater participation comes greater responsiveness of government to what the public actually wants, to what we actually need our elected officials to be accountable for, to what the state needs for future sustainability (anyone in favor of a reliable electric grid, for example?). We have a long way to go beyond arguing over a book in the local library or what to plant in the Travis Street pedestrian barrier, readers.

May God forgive us for our selfish shortsightedness and give us the wisdom and strength to focus our attention beyond only our individual, sometimes less significant passions and onto our state’s much larger issues of the body politic.