Why Do So Few Voters Vote In Dallas & Fort Worth?

I saw that which you see here a couple days ago, on Facebook. I do not remember via whom on Facebook I saw this. I think it may have been via one of Elsie Hotpepper's ex-boyfriends.

That which you see here is a chart showing voter turnout in multiple major American cities.

I was not too shocked to see Texas towns dominating the low end of the chart.

Austin had the biggest voter turnout of the Texas towns, but was still near the bottom of the list.

So, what town is at the bottom of the list?

You are probably guessing it is Fort Worth. Well, that guess would be wrong.

At the bottom of the list, with the lowest voter turnout, is Dallas. Coming in second worst, barely above Dallas, is the aforementioned Fort Worth.

Why do so few voters turn out to vote in Dallas and Fort Worth? While other towns at the top end of the list, such as Portland and Seattle, turn out a lot of voters.

Well, having voted both in Texas and Washington I think I may have a clue as to one of the reasons for the low Texas voter turnout, in addition to the obvious usual reasons, such as collectively fewer high school and college graduates in Texas locations like Dallas and Fort Worth.

But, I don't think having way fewer well educated citizens is the reason for the low voter turnout in Dallas and Fort Worth.

I think it has to do with what is on the ballots. As in what voters are being asked to vote on.

I remember my first exposure to a Fort Worth ballot thinking it to be a bit odd. My only previous voting experiences had been in the Skagit Valley zone of Washington, where the ballots had a plethora of issues to vote on. Local races, local bond issues, state wide issues, as in multiple statewide initiatives, referendums, propositions and similar such things to vote on.

You know, issues on the ballot which impact the voter's lives in multiple ways, thus giving the voter a motivation to vote.

While in Fort Worth something like a massive public works project, originally called the Trinity River Vision, gets foisted on the public with no public vote.

But the Fort Worth voters do get asked to vote on something like a new multi-purpose arena, but not via a simple yes or no type approval.

Instead, in Fort Worth, something as mundane as voting for or against an arena is on the ballot as three separate resolutions. One resolution approving a fee to rent a horse stall, one resolution to approve a tax on parking, one resolution to approve a tax on tickets. The approval or disapproval of these three resolutions supposedly determined whether or not the arena would get built.

Even though this seemed a goofy way to vote for or against a new arena, voting for these three arena resolutions is the only time I can remember the approval of such a thing being on a Fort Worth ballot.

Usually BORING is the word I would use to describe what is on a Fort Worth ballot.

I assume, what with Dallas having a lower voter turnout than Fort Worth, the Dallas ballots also have a high level of nothing significant to vote on.

However, Dallas voters were allowed to vote on their version of the Trinity River Vision, way back late in the last century. Early in the next century Fort Worth pretty much carbon copied the Dallas Trinity River Vision, except for the part about allowing Fort Worth voters to vote on the issue.

The Dallas Trinity River Vision saw three signature bridges. So did the copycat Fort Worth Vision.

Dallas has completed two of it signature bridges, built over the Trinity River.

Meanwhile Fort Worth's Vision's bridges, being built over dry land, ceased being signature bridges years ago, and now have seen their construction stalled for over a year.

I wonder if what has become America's Biggest Boondoggle would have seen same pitiful fate if this Fort Worth public works project had actually been voted for by the public?

Elsie Hotpepper's Bud Kennedy Cheerleading Turkey Nightmares Led Me To Why So Few Texans Vote

Last night Elsie Hotpepper sent me a disturbing text message informing me that she was unable to sleep due to the fact that she could not erase the disturbing image of Bud Kennedy in a pleated skirt, with ankle socks stuck in saddle shoes, wearing a Fort Worth logo-ed sweater doing cheerleader routines for Fort Worth's Godfather of the Good Ol' Boy Network, Ed Bass.

To which I texted back with a simple, 'HUH?"

To which Elsie texted that the nightmare image came from reading the 2014 Fort Worth Weekly Turkey Awards.

Since I had no idea what Elsie was talking about and since I had no memory of anything in the Turkey Awards having to do with Bud Kennedy wearing a skirt, I decided I must not have read the Fort Worth Weekly 2014 Turkey Awards with the attention level  they deserved.

And so I took a fresh look.

The first  thing I noticed that I'd not noticed before was that which I screencapped above, the text of which I will copy below...

The Big Bird Goes to: Non-Voters

This year’s dedication of the Big Bird, our sweepstakes Turkey, will be short and sour. It goes to the 83 percent of registered voters in Texas who stayed home on Nov. 4. Any organization — whether it’s the Democratic Party or the Republicans,  a church, a bunch of mega-corporations or the Mafia — that gathers too much power soon gets up to no good. At a time when this state is playing a major role in pollution and energy controversies that could affect the whole world via climate change, allowing so much power to concentrate in one party severely reduces the public debate on those and many other issues. And that’s what those who stayed home in November helped make happen.

Texas having the lowest voter turnout in the nation is a bit appalling, particularly when one looks at the result of the election. After the election I read an apropos blurb in, I think, the Washington Post, which may help explain the low voter turnout in Texas....

States where turnout is higher have a few things in common: Their populations are better educated, which correlates with higher turnout, and they have implemented rules that make it easier to vote, McDonald said. Maine, Wisconsin and Minnesota — all top turnout states — allow eligible citizens to register to vote on Election Day.

Well, there you go, quite simple, the Texas low voter turnout is yet one more bad result that comes about due to the population of Texas not being as well educated as those who received their educations in states with more progressive education standards.

And then I found that which gave the long suffering Elsie Hotpepper her nightmares....

Cheering a Big Land-Gobble

Bud Kennedy has been at this game long enough to get away with pretty much anything. And most of the time, the veteran Startlegram columnist comes from a good place. But when the civic discourse turned to the new arena at the Will Rogers Memorial Center in the Cultural District, Kennedy donned his saddle shoes, ankle socks, pleated skirt, and FW-emblazoned sweater and cheered on Ed Bass, the power broker behind the $450 million (and counting) monstrosity. In Kennedy’s July 18 remembrance of the Fort Worth Convention Center –– the structure that the 14,000-seat arena is supposedly replacing –– he managed to leave out a few pesky facts: that parking is at a premium in the jam-packed neighborhood and, much worse, that the public had little to no say about it, even though millions of taxpayer dollars had already been spent on infrastructure. On Nov. 4 voters easily approved the arena (including $225 million as the city’s share). Kennedy should have been calling bullshit on yet another sneaky, screw-the-little-people play. Did he uncharacteristically not do his homework, or was he kowtowing to his employer, which has a long record of kissing up to the power players?

I really do not understand why so many people pick on good ol' Bud Kennedy. Some have even taken to calling him Dud, rather than Bud. Mr. Kennedy works for  the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Why would anyone expect him not to act as a propaganda purveyor when his bosses deem some local issue needs a cheerleading spin?

Bud Kennedy is an excellent food critic due to being a professional food consumer. He writes at a voluminous level of prolific-ness which is astounding, including finding the time to play hall monitor on his Facebook page.

Some suspect there may be more than one Bud Kennedy, due to instances such as thousands seeing him on a parade float at the same time he's posting a plate of food he's consuming in a Dallas eatery. That type thing, while also deleting inappropriate comments from his Facebook page.

I do have to agree with the Fort Worth Weekly Turkey Award awarders that it is a bit odd that Bud Kennedy went along with the Multi-Purpose Arena scheme, man of the people that he be, and what with that Arena being sold as a replacement for the Convention Center Arena, which the propagandists claimed could not hold enough ticket buyers to attract major acts, but somehow the new arena, which can hold an additional two thousand ticket buyers, will somehow attract those acts which previously avoided Fort Worth like the plague.

Has anyone considered the possibility that there may be other reasons than arena size why major acts opt not to appear in Fort Worth and choose instead other venues in Dallas and Arlington? Venues that can hold way more than the 14,000 Fort Worth's new arena may hold if it actually ever gets built....