Bulls**t! Your Vote DOES Count!

I get so sick of people using the tired spin line 'my vote doesn't count' as an excuse to shirk participating in elections, then bitch about the policies they don't like.

It's s time to change your way of thinking about voting and elections. The best part about this post is that I'm not going to beat you over the head with our well-documented tortured history with the process to do it either.

Don't look at your vote as if it doen't count. Look at it as the fact that you voted your conscience and for the best candidate. It's just that other folks didn't see it that way this time. One day you will cast the vote for the winning side.

The first election in which I was eligible to cast a ballot in was the 1980
presidential contest between Reagan and Jimmy Carter. It wasn't until 1992 that I finally cast a ballot for the winning presidential candidate. (Bill Clinton)

In the first Texas governor's race I was eligible to participate in back in 1982 I was more successful. Right out the box I voted for the eventual winner Mark White. I also proudly voted for Ann Richards in 1990 and 1994.

I've had a more successful run in Houston area politics. Since 1981 I'd voted for the eventual winner in every mayoral election except one. The one exception in which I was on the losing side was 1991. That year state rep Sylvester Turner was defeated in his bid to become Houston's first African-American mayor by Bob Lanier.

My most important vote cast so far (outside of tomorrow's midterm election) was in 1997. I joined other Houstonians and a 7-1 African-American tidal wave of opposition in helping beat back Ward Connerly's attempts to clone his Prop 209 anti-affirmative action crap into our city charter. It effectively stopped cold his attempts to do so in other areas around the country. (he's trying it again in Michigan)

It was the first time he'd attempted to pass one of his odious anti-affirmative action amendments in an area with more than a 10% African-American population. Florida sent him packing a year later. Every time I voted to pass HISD school bonds I considered it an important vote.

The most historic ones? Got a few that stand out. Electing Kathy Whitmire the first woman mayor in Houston's history in 1981. Electing Lee Brown in 1997 as Houston's first African-American mayor. Helping Ann Richards become the first woman governor of Texas since 1921. Casting the ballot that helped Annise Parker become the first openly gay person elected to a citywide Houston City Council seat. Annise is now the city controller, the path that Kathy Whitmire used on her way to the mayor's office.

See, your vote does count. It's all in the way you look at it.