Analysis: Texas lawmakers listen to voters running

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Elected officials listen to voters, and the Texas government could do so much better if voters were more demanding.

What if there were more Texans voting.

Watch how the crisis focuses political attention on problem solving – and the problems politicians are working on when voters are not vigilant.

In the 2019 legislative session, after a 2018 election in which voters sent a “get serious” message to state officials, public education and property taxes were the top topics on the list, just below voter dissatisfaction with then-President Donald Trump. .

In the previous session, lawmakers were distracted by other issues — political ones — like the “toilet bill” that sought to regulate which bathrooms transgender Texans would be allowed to use. It didn’t pass, but enough voters were unhappy enough to bring the elected class online.

Senior state officials didn’t specifically say they wouldn’t be working on another toilet bill, but they did say they would focus on serious ‘meat and potatoes’ issues. . And they did, passing legislation to slow the growth of property taxes and reworking public school funding to put more of a burden on the state and less on local schools. It wasn’t property tax relief, as some had promised – taxes don’t go down, they just go up at a slower rate – but it was serious work.

All that happened between those two sessions was an election that saw Democrats take a bite out of the Republican majority in the Legislature and Republicans in power statewide, albeit with margins. smaller victories than they had seen in a long, long time.

Voters speak and politicians listen. This particular feedback loop actually works whether you think the votes count or not. The turnout in the 2018 elections was 53%. It’s mediocre, unless you look at recent history. Turnout is highest in presidential elections, when the hype of a national race attracts voters who often aren’t interested in other elections. But 2018 was an off-year election, like this year’s. And in the previous off-year cycle in 2014, turnout was 33.7%. Four years earlier, 38% of registered voters had turned out.

The message in 2018 was in the election results, but also in the high level of voter interest. And the reaction of the chosen class was like the difference between normal highway traffic and highway traffic when the state troopers are out in force.

When fewer of us are watching, lawmakers pursue their own political ends.

If you work in the Legislative Assembly and the list of voter demands is low, you can turn to personal projects and political issues that relate to primary voters – that relatively small number of supporters who show up in March. , while more than four of the five registered voters in the state are doing something else.

It’s not complicated. Elected officials on all sides listen carefully to their constituents so that these voters do not send them home. Not always, not everyone, and not every time, but on average voters throw the wrong eggs.

But which voters, and which types of rotten eggs? The general election draws the biggest crowds, because it’s where statewide races are decided, and it’s the big, loud pileups that grab the attention. But most legislative races are decided in primaries, when most of us don’t vote.

Political maps drawn by lawmakers sort the state into Republican and Democratic districts, and as you would expect from a GOP-majority legislature, there are more Republican districts than Democrats. Lawmakers themselves decide which party has the best, often overwhelming, chance of winning in each district. They are usually sued by hordes of litigants, but this year the courts have so far left them alone, leaving Legislature preferences in place for this election cycle.

This leaves the real choice to the primary voters of each party, and since they make the real choice in the congressional and legislative races in Texas, it is the voters that these elected officials are listening to. They have protected themselves behind a minority of the electorate, and they spend their official time on issues important to that group.

Only 17.5% of registered voters in the state showed up in the primaries in March this year. They are often demanding, urging the people they elect to rule in a particular way. What changes the outcome is when these small electorates grow larger, giving some of each party’s quietest voters a chance to be heard.

Votes count.