Texas Politics & Government: Ideas and Institutions

Michael Li posted this chart on Facebook. It shows the prior voting behavior of voters in the 2018 midterm election in Texas. What strikes me is that 14 percent had no previous voting history, which leads one to believe that there were a lot of young people voting. That may not be the case. It could be people who have moved to Texas from other states, e.g. California. A majority (56 percent) had voted in a previous midterm in Texas--either in both midterms (33 percent) or one midterm (23 percent). Thirty percent had voted in a presidential election since 2012 (12 percent in both 2012 and 2016, and 18 percent in either 2012 or 2016).

With Trump's refusal to accept any compromise that doesn't include money for his "wall," I'm reminded of James David Barber's classification of presidential character types in his book, Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House . Barber notes that character is one of three components of personality. It develops first, usually from interactions with parents and siblings, and is the most stable component. He defines it as the way a president orients himself towards life. There are two components of character: (1) activity level denotes how a president engages in the presidency, being either active or passive; (2) positive or negative depicts the reasons that a person seeks the presidency in the first place and how he/she defines the role. A positive character type seeks the presidency to do good things for the nation. A negative character type seeks the presidency to overcome his/her own self doubts, to compensate for people's lack ...

Almost two years ago, I wrote a post concerning presidential prerogative powers and President Trump. Last week, President Trump, through a tweet, announced that the United States was pulling its troops from Syria and soon from Afghanistan. This action led to the resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis. In his resignation letter , Mattis explained that the president deserved to have a defense secretary whose policy positions were more in line with the president's views. Mattis had tried to change the president's mind on withdrawal from Syria, but his lack of success led to his resignation. Then, on Friday, the president allowed the government to be shut down over his desire for five billion dollars for a border wall. Although the president had previously stated publicly that he would be glad to carry the mantel of shutting down the government if he didn't get the wall, he subsequently blamed Democratic Party leaders for forcing the shut down. The president cancele...

Even more revealing than the table of the fifty states' voter turnout is the chart depicting the turnout in 2014 and 2018. Notice the variation among the states in terms of voter turnout in 2014 and the linear nature of voter turnout in 2018. Only two states--Alaska and Louisiana--had a decrease in voter turnout. The average increase in voter turnout was 13 percent. The article in the Tribune stresses the importance of competitive races and money in driving voter turnout, but the efforts of the political parties and other groups supporting various methods of contact--including, most importantly, block-walking--is testament to the argument that giving people a reason to vote is more important than reducing barriers to voting in increasing voter turnout. The importance of each factor--ease of registering to vote and mobilization of voters--would be an interesting research question.

In the last post I mentioned the Texas Tribune's article on voter turnout. Here's a spread sheet that lists voter turnout (VEP) in 2014 and 2018 for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Texas was second worst in voter turnout in 2014 and worst among the states that elected governors in the election. Voter turnout is better, but Texas is still near the bottom. The states are arranged by voter turnout in 2018 from highest to lowest. Can Texas ever best Minnesota? ...

According to the Texas Tribune, Texas ranked sixth among the 50 states in increase in voter turnout compared to the last midterm election in 2014. However, Texas still ranks near the bottom in turnout of voting-eligible population, which is calculated by taking the number of votes cast and dividing it by the voting age population minus noncitizens and felons who have not had the voting rights restored. Among Texas' 18,072,155 eligible voters, there were 8,371,655 votes cast in the contest for the U.S. Senate between incumbent Republican Ted Cruz and challenger Democrat Beto O'Rourke. What is notable about the figure is that more than seven million Texans were registered but did not vote. Much less dramatic is the more than two million Texans who were not registered to vote. Consequently, changing Texas' restrictions on voter registration--to participate in an election, one must register at least 30 days prior to the election and there is no online voter registration...