Wednesday, March 03, 2010

How to Cast a Vote for Under Vote

What a turn of events. It’s almost like 2006 when in the CD-22 race there was no Republican on the ballot, and Nick Lampson won against a write-in candidate. This time there will be no Democrat on the ballot for CD-22 this November.

Because true to my most dismal of predictions, Kesha Rogers, follower of the right (no . . .left, no . . . right) wingnut Lyndon LaRouche, narrowly edged her Libertarian opponent and her True Democrat opponent.

What she, and her two opponents, lacked in name recognition Rogers made up for in terms of ballot position.

In Harris County, where she came in 2nd place at the end of Election Night, she came in second to Doug Blatt. Who came in third? Someone called Under Vote.

Then came Freddie Wieder.

In Fort Bend County, where she first on the ballot, Kesha Rogers won. Coming in second place was that other guy, Under Vote. Then came Doug Blatt, then Freddie.

In Galveston County, where she was second on the ballot, Kesha Rogers came in second. Under Vote was edged by Doug Blatt by one percent.

Who won in Galveston County? Freddie Wieder.

Freddie had the honor of being in the top position on the Galveston County Ballot.

In Brazoria County? Kesha Rogers garnered sixty-one percent of the votes there, followed by Under Vote, then Doug Blatt, then Freddie.

I now know that Kesha Rogers had the number one position on the ballot in Brazoria County. Under Vote came in second place, edging Doug Blatt by 0.1%, then Freddie.

Kudos, to Brazoria County voters, though. Freddie Wieder actually had the second place spot on their ballot, but Brazoria County voters bucked the trend and more of them voted for the guy in the third spot than second on the ballot.

Good for you, good for you.

Now, when you do the numbers from the county websites, not the Texas Secretary of State, whose numbers are slightly different, what you see is that Kesha Rogers won the primary, but in second place was none other than Under Vote. Under Vote beat Doug Blatt by almost a thousand votes.

So come Election Day 2010 Democratic voters will be asked either to vote for a follower of Lyndon LaRouche who is calling on the impeachment of President Barack Obama, or to vote for the Republican incumbent Pete Olson, who would call for the impeachment of Barack Obama if he was as loony tunes crazy as his opponent.

Because I doubt that Democrats are going to be nutty enough to submit a write-in candidate to split the vote of Democratic voters, some of whom who will vote for Kesha Rogers simply because she has a D next to her name.

So I have an alternative.

Instead of voting for Kesha Rogers in November, and instead of going completely crazy and voting for Pete Olson in November, Democrats can vote for that guy who came in second in the Democratic primary.

Cast your vote for Under Vote.

Here’s how you do it. After getting to the first screen on that Dial-A-Vote voting machine we have here, you click the button when the cursor is over the box for Straight Democratic Ticket. Then you go back to the list of candidates and where you can vote for them individually and you emphasize your vote for Kesha Rogers by clicking on the red-filled square next to her name.

De-selecting that vote.

By doing that you cast your vote for the second-place winner of the Democratic Primary in CD-22.

Under Vote.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

What function does the under vote serve?

Hal said...

Simple. An under vote's function serves to prevent a voter from supporting a candidate to which they have absolutely no desire to see elected to office.

An under vote is not voting in that race at all.

There are people I know who did not vote for Nick Lampson in 2008 because he was not voting like a Democrat sometimes.

But in this case, not voting for Kesha Rogers is like not voting for Pete Olson. Olson wins but at least Democrats don't look foolish voting for a Lyndon LaRouche follower - one wh has a truly odd mix of political perspectives rolled up into lunacy.

Fenway Fran said...

Excellent public service announcement, Hal. It is astonishing that she even calls herself a Democrat, even more astonishing that people voted for her. They obviously were not paying attention!

Tony said...

Great idea, Hal.

Unrelated (or maybe entirely related), how great it is to have a real Dem County Chair and a true Dem State Rep for District 27?!

Anonymous said...

Hal, you obvious know background history regarding Ms. Rogers’ politics; however, an interesting thought occurred to me, could Ms. Rogers’ dingbat campaign be a ploy to get the Republicans and Teabaggers to vote for her so as to get elected? Help me out if you can---I'm trying to dig deep to make sense of the essence of her campaign motive, as a Democrat. Therefore the thought came to me that "just maybe" she is using a "no holes barred" ploy to get elected in a very Republican county in a "still" very much Repulican state.