To Vote or Not to Vote

Because I’m a precinct chair, I get some data on the election. I have access to names, addresses, and phone numbers of registered voters in my precinct. Additional information tells me who has voted in primary elections. Voters are then divided into tiers, so I can decide who to reach out to for Get Out the Vote (GOTV) efforts. I am encouraged to make use of the data by reaching out to them. The daily updates during early voting tell me who in the top couple of tiers has not voted. A week ago I spent an afternoon individually contacting many dozen voters to remind them of when and where to vote, and where to get information. A few thanked me. A few more texted STOP, even though I’m an individual doing it the hard way and not a list, but I’ll respect that.

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Before last weekend my list started including another tier down, adding in not only those we could count on to vote Republican, but those we believe lean Republican. As of today, with just today and tomorrow left of early voting, all but 16% of the known and leaning Republicans in my precinct have already voted. The rest I am assuming plan to vote in person on election day. I can’t envision any active Republican this election year not getting around to deciding whether to vote.

I have a skeptical relationship with GOTV drives. Maybe this year more than any. Of course we need every vote we can get. We need a large enough margin to overcome any disenfranchisement done by voter fraud, which we already know is happening.[i] But what I don’t want to do—because I really hate that the opposition does this—they’re not actually giving voice to more informed votes; they’re giving additional voice to their own vote. They add numbers to their side without actually adding any more informed voters to their side.

I’m all in favor of adding more informed voters, which is why I see my job as a precinct chair—and as a political activist, if you must use that uncomfortable term—is inform people who appreciate getting the information, which seems easier for me to come by, because I’m dialed in, than it does for them.

One of the amusing stories—if these weren’t such serious times—is that one of the most Googled searches this past week (since the final presidential debate) has been “How do I change my vote?” 

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Oddly, there are several states that have a procedure for that—if they submitted a mail-in ballot that has not yet been counted. We can only hope that they are doing that securely, with no double counting or shenanigans. But maybe it’s not a great idea to vote before you know enough about your candidate. If your candidate, for instance, has had a long record of plagiarism, lying, and corruption[ii]—stories that have been widely available if you took a look—but you didn’t know about them until news stories broke through in late October, then I can see why you’d feel sick about having already cast your vote.

There's me with my "I Voted" sticker

I can see some wisdom in early voting. I often do it, usually just a few days before the election. I did that this week, exactly a week ahead of election day. I didn’t want anything to get in the way of my voting. I’m planning to work at our polling place on election day—but what if I got a sudden illness or got in an accident? I wanted my vote to be certain. I did it in person. Securely? I hope so, although our County Clerk has been unable to rectify a discrepancy of several thousand early votes—an error that simply should not ever happen. Early votes aren’t tallied; just the number of voters is what has been counted, and that is off by several thousand.  

Anyway, I voted early, and I’m glad for that opportunity. But I was certain my vote wasn’t going to change between now and election day. How certain were those people who voted early and then want to change their vote? Will they learn from this experience?

Unlike many, I don’t see voting as a right and obligation for every citizen; it is a privilege to vote, and should only be done after study, thought, prayer, and understanding. While I don’t advocate any kind of voting test (beyond being a legal citizen registered to vote who can prove identification), I do wish we could convince people not to take the privilege too lightly. As I may have said before, “with great power (to vote) comes great responsibility (to vote responsibly).”

Who should vote?

·         A person who has informed themselves about the candidates and issues and wants to express their considered opinion in a way that holds as much weight as anyone else’s considered opinion.

Who should voluntarily not vote?

·         A person who is uninformed, or worse, misinformed about the candidates and issues.

·         A person who sees only what limited sources of input tell them, and believe what they’re told without questioning.

·         A person who hasn’t read and understood the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence.

·         A person who lacks understanding about the freedoms protected by our Constitution.

·         A person who fails to understand that the proper role of government is to protect our God-given rights of life, liberty, and property.

·         A person who thinks our rights come from government, and who clamors for more invented “rights” at the expense of fellow citizens.

·         A person who thinks they have a right to other people’s money—as long as they use government to steal it and hand it over to them.

·         A person who thinks a person’s skin color or other “intersectional” characteristics are more important than a person’s character or even shared political beliefs—such persons are the real bigots.

·         A person who thinks big states or urban populations should dictate to smaller states and rural and suburban areas how everyone should do things.

·         A person who thinks America is inherently and systemically evil—you can’t vote for a slight tweak to what you abhor; you overthrow it, or you leave it. So please feel free to leave.

·         A person who doesn’t want free and fair elections, but thinks that lying, cheating, stealing, and fraud are acceptable ways of conducting an election—as long as it goes their way.

·         A person who thinks anyone who disagrees with them is evil and should be silenced.

·         A person who accepts deeply ingrained patterns of corruption from those on their side of the partisan divide, but who accepts not even a single flaw in someone on the other side.

If you’re one of those persons who shouldn’t be voting, do us all a favor and recuse yourself this election. As for next time, you can earn the privilege by doing the right things and becoming the sort of person who ought to vote.

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[i] “Texas Poll Watcher Testifies On 2020 Voter Fraud In Houston: Report,” Ken Webster, Jr., October 26, 2020, KTRH News Radio. See also “The Alleged Organized Voter Fraud Ring in Harris County” September 26, 2020, Houston Business Connections Newspaper. And see also “RIGGED ELECTION: TX 'Ballot Chaser' Illegally Pressures Voters To Change Votes,” James O’Keefe, October 27, 2020, Project Veritas YouTube. And see also “Chain of Custody? What’s That?” Kris Maxymillian, October 22, 2020, Conservative Texas Facebook. And see also “Printing Issue Affects 1/3 of Mail-In Ballots in Tarrant County, Administrator Says,” Ben Russell & Lili Zheng, October 27, 2020, NBCDFW. For an example beyond Texas, see “No Signature Match? No Postmark? No Problemo! It's This Week in Ballot Shenanigans!” Victoria Taft, October 23, 2020, PJ Media. And also consider “Joe's Freudian Sniff? Joe Biden Just Said He's Got a Great 'VOTER FRAUD Organization' Going,” Victoria Taft, October 24, 2020, PJ Media.

[ii] “Evidence of Joe Biden Corruption Just Keeps Piling Up, and the Media Refuses to Cover It,” Tyler O’Neil, October 29, 2020, PJ Media. See also “BOMBSHELL: Hunter Biden Email Names Kamala Harris, Others as Key Contacts for 'Joint Venture' With China Energy Co.,” Bryan Preston, October 22,2020, PJ Media. 

That Pesky 3% Plus One

I don’t consider this a political blog. I consider it a philosophical blog, literally about the interrelationships of political,economic, and social spheres. My emphasis, internally, is always on the social sphere—or better labeled the civilization sphere, the opposition between civilization and savagery. Only a people seeking to live the principles required for thriving civilization can expect freedom from tyranny and overall economic prosperity.

But I recognize that public policies affect our freedom, prosperity, and thriving. And refusing to engage in the political world is to leave those public policy decisions in the hands of people who simply don’t have a clear understanding of the way northward on the spheres. So, people like me, who think and care, have an obligation to be at least somewhat engaged in the political sphere. While I am discouraged by the outcome of the last several years of engagement in politics, I am not free of the obligation to try to influence public policy for good. At this point I am still exploring what my efforts should look like—as is true for many like-minded friends at this point.

Let me share some of what I’ve been discovering.

This is from a piece by political consultant Michael I. Rothfeld:

Simply put, politics is not about the common good, appealing to men's better angels, nor serving our Lord. These may be your motivations. Occasionally, they will be a politician's motivation. Politics is the adjudication of power. It is the process by which people everywhere determine who rules whom.

In America, through a brilliant system of rewards and punishments, checks and balances, and diffusion of authority, we have acquired a habit and history of politics mostly without violence and excessive corruption.

The good news for you and me is that the system works.

The bad news is it is hard, and sometimes dirty work, for us to succeed in enacting policy.

There is absolutely no reason for you to spend your time, talent, and money in politics except for this: if you do not, laws will be written and regulations enforced by folks with little or no interest in your well-being.

Further in this piece he has a graphic showing who decides elections. About 70% of adults are eligible to vote (citizens, not felons). Only 40% (about 60% of the eligible) are registered to vote. Of registered voters, a good turnout on election day is 50% of registered voters, so only about 20% of the population. Of that 20%, 7% will always vote Democrat; 7% will always vote GOP. That leaves 6% who are undecided. The vote turns on ½ of that 6% plus one person.

Tyranny of the uninformed—that is what this seems to be. I thought I was doing my part as a citizen, getting informed, studying issues, meeting and studying candidates, sharing what I learned with others who share my concerns, and learning from them what they had learned. And then we went out, with much enthusiasm, and voted. Many of us contacted more other voters than ever before. We connected in person and online in more ways, and much more often, than we had ever done before. Politics took a much larger chunk of our interest than we would like to devote to anything we don’t absolutely love. And what I felt right after the election was a slap in the face, mainly from people on our side saying, “We never had a ground game. We didn’t do the work. We had an enthusiasm gap.” None of that is actually true.

What did happen was that we learned something about “community organizing.” It isn’t really about grassroots informing and gathering like-minded people; it is about manipulating the uninformed. To them it is a game of finding ways, both legal and illegal, of casting more uninformed votes for their own agenda.

I absolutely do not believe that the way to save the nation is to copy that modus operandi and just manipulate more uninformed votes our way. That will not solve the problem that not enough people in our country love the Constitution and the freedom and way of life it represents.

The eventual solution, if there is to be a solution, must include more people choosing freedom because they understand the principles and love the beauty of freedom, prosperity, and civilization and eschew tyranny, economic theft, and savagery. If we don’t have a critical mass of such people, we will be ruled by the people who either purposefully or haphazardly lead us southward into all the interrelated misery that is inevitable.

Sharing the word of God may have a bigger effect on our long-term prosperity as a people than anything we do in the political realm. But that is a long-term separate effort.

In the meantime, is there anything political we can and should do? There’s this:

·         Find other like-minded people (or continue with those you’ve already found) to strengthen your voice.

·         Work to influence the elected officials who actually have the ability to affect policy.

Politicians don’t want to alienate that 3% plus one person. So they try to avoid doing anything too hard or controversial. But, if you pressure the politician, steadily, over the long-term, with some understanding of their position but steadfast on your own, you and your citizen lobbying group can influence for change. He quoted the late Everett Dickson, saying, “When I feel the heat, I see the light.”

During the last state legislative session (in Texas that’s January to June every odd-numbered year), I helped arrange to visit, along with a few other volunteers from our local tea party, all the state officials’ local offices. We took with us a list of legislation we were watching. We followed each legislator’s positions on those issues, asked for commitments when we could. I plan to do these visits again this session. It’s not a huge time commitment, and was a positive experience, with some good outcomes. So, as political efforts go, this is probably a good way.

There must be other ways as well. And I’ll continue looking for them. Because, as frustrating as the situation is, I am not willing to submit to tyranny of the uninformed.