Early Voting in Texas

Early voting began today here in Texas. I guess I'll go vote.

Voting is way different here in Texas than I was used to up in Washington. One difference is, up north, I had a permanent absentee ballot. This was much more convenient than driving to a polling place.

The biggest difference between voting in Texas and Washington is in Washington there'd always be way more on the ballot that I had a motivation to vote on.

Like Initiatives and Referendums and Propositions. I don't think Texas has a state-wide Initiative and Referendum system.

Texas towns do put Propositions on the ballot. Like for this coming election Fort Worth has 2 Propositions. Fort Worth's Proposition #1 is about whether or not to allow the sale of beer and wine for off-premises consumption. Fort Worth's Propostion #2 is also booze-related, as in whether or not to allow the sale of mixed beverages in restaurants by food and beverage certificate holders.

That's it for Fort Worth. The good citizens of Fort Worth don't get to vote on things like the destruction of the confluence of 2 forks of the Trinity River to build a little lake and some canals. Or how about a Proposition for a bond issue to raise money to fix up the Fort Worth Stockyards? Or how about voting on whether or not to provide funding to keep the Fort Worth Public Libary system fully operating?

Usually, up in Washington, on any given voting day there are several Initiatives and Referendum and Propositions to vote on. It can be things like the entire state will vote on whether or not to blow up a Kingdome and build a new football stadium. Or King County will vote on whether or not to build a light rail system. Or vote 5 times on a proposal to build a new monorail. Or several affected counties will vote on whether or not to spend $1 billion to build a new suspension bridge.

In Washington citizens can put something on the ballot via getting enough signatures on a petition. That's called an Initiative. The state legislature can pass a law that can also end up on the ballot due to citizen action. That's called a Referendum.

In Washington it'd never fall to one town to vote on and build something that the entire region benefits from, like a professional football stadium. In Washington no one would dream of using eminent domain to take citizen's homes to build a football stadium. Mostly because you'd be an idiot up there to think you could do that and successfully win a public vote to finance a stadium. In Texas you can be an idiot and successfully get people to vote to tax themselves to build you a stadium and to evict your neighbors from their homes, with nary a peep of protest.

In other words, in many ways other parts of America are more of a participatory democracy than Texas.

So I guess I'll go vote. The only thing I have any interest in is the Presidential vote. The rest are mostly meaningless names to me. Oh, there are those very important Fort Worth booze-related Propositions. I'll be sure and vote no on those.