Vote Like Your Life Depends on It
To the Editor:
Please extend my thank you to Mr. Behlen and his reporting on county elections administrator Ms. Hefner’s diligence in ensuring a safe and fair election this season, I hope the article allays some of Ms. Frank’s et al. concerns in recent letters about mail-in voting fraud and that everyone who chooses to do so feels comfortable in the safety of their health and their vote. I would however like to raise an eyebrow to what Ms. Hefner says may be of most consequence this time around, as she points out at the end of Mr. Behlen’s reporting that the decisions of the folks over in the Cummins Creek watershed and the townspeople of Ellinger, whose own election outcomes “may have an even bigger impact locally than who wins state and national races.” This statement is at best a head-scratcher and at worst, a dog whistle for “your vote is relatively meaningless.”
State and federal elections have tremendous consequences, not only abroad, but right here in Fayette County. From how much local business owners can be bailed out due to a pandemic at taxpayer expense (about $30 million in Fayette County); to whether our county receives enough resources to adequately operate our Meals-on-Wheels program; from whether the Book of Genesis will replace the book of Galileo in our children’s classroom; or if our friends over at Cozy Corner have enough legal teeth to prevent the burning of toxic materials in their backyard; to whether we blindly perpetuate the war on drugs for decades so that our sheriff can have an unimpeded revenue stream to line the department’s pockets rather than treating drug addiction as a public health issue; to how many of our neighbors who were affected by Hurricane Harvey can be made whole again; to whether we have a healthcare system that by design fundamentally profits on our own inherent weaknesses for the benefit of a select few or a system that promotes the general welfare for all; state and federal elections impact us greatly, and at times rather tragically, on and on and on...
Take the 2016 election: you can draw a straight line from the President, through Lt. Governor Patrick, to County Judge Weber, and at each point illustrate the intentional downplaying of the severity of this virus at the expense of our health. At the end of June, the Judge was belaboring us to look at the place of decimal points and how insignificant the virus is to our community, to just a few weeks ago where he raised the white flag and resignedly states “we just have to learn to live with it”. Thousands upon thousands of preventable deaths, including eighteen (as of Sept. 17, the time of this letter, according to Johns Hopkins University) here at home, because of the actions (or inactions) of those we elect to lead us. I can extend that line, with little loss of fidelity, to my neighbor, who sits on the city council of La Grange and voted against the temporary enforcing of wearing masks in public, which has proven pivotal in the declining of cases here. After a lengthy discussion with them about why they voted against the measure, I soon realized that they took comfort in their decision based, in part, on the political cover Judge Weber offered them (who continues to take comfort and shelter from the Lt. Governor and the President). This needless suffering is happening in real time because our elected leaders cannot look past their self-interest and their selfish ideology. A robust economy that works for everybody needs a strong and healthy populace; it is a false choice that we must choose between the two.
Look at the election of 2000, where a few hundred votes in Florida determined the stop and start of another naïve and reckless failed ideology, a so-called project for a new American century, in which hundreds of thousands of innocent people, who had zero representation in the election, are now dead. Texas is quickly becoming an electoral swing state like Florida, and five hundred votes here or there in Fayette County can have seismic repercussions not only for us, but for those far beyond our county line.
Ms. Hefner is certainly allowed her own distortions of election consequences, but those distortions should be checked at the door in her role as a county administrator. Anybody, and to be clear this is not an attack on Ms. Hefner, but anybody, including our President, who tries to cast doubt on the sanctity of our vote, to question our faith in a secure election without evidence, who knowingly throws wrenches into the gears of our democracy, is not worthy of our attention or of leading us.
I don’t think I have to beg the readers and writers of the Record to vote, so I would like to ask each of us to find somebody we know who might not otherwise this season and encourage them to register (deadline is Monday, Oct. 5 here in Texas) and to vote, to vote like their life depends on it, and to vote like all our lives depend on it.
John Morrison La Grange