Texas Secretary of State David Whitley made a stop at San Marcos High School Friday morning to speak to seniors about the importance and power of participating in their democracy through voting.
Whitley has been a name in media coverage recently with the controversial voter review that was was “admittedly flawed,” according to Gov. Greg Abbott. But Abbott has downplayed Whitley’s role in the botched review of the voter rolls, as Whitley, a longtime aide of Abbott, faces a tough confirmation fight in the Senate that could result in him losing his job.
Whitley told San Marcos High School students that voting can affect much more than who is sitting in an office on Capitol Hill; it can affect everything from whether their schools get new textbooks and what property taxes are to what the gas prices are at the pump.
“All those decisions about what happens in your life and the lives of generations that are going to come after you happen when people vote,” Whitley said. “When you vote on school boards, when you vote on county officials — county judges or sheriffs — when you vote on the mayor, when you vote on state officials in the House and Senate, when you vote on judges, statewide officials like the lieutenant governor and the attorney general. These are all important positions that someday someone in this room might hold, but even if you don’t hold it, you’re going to have families, you’re going to have jobs, you’re going to be going through life and want to know ‘how can I actually have an effect on what’s going on in my life?’”
He also emphasized to the students that registering to vote is just the first step in participating, the next is researching the issues and actually showing up at the polls.
“Once you register, the key is to actually participate,” Whitley said.
“How do you participate, you can vote, but what should you do before you vote? You research. Read the papers, read what is being said about elections; make up your own mind and vote. You can affect things on a very large and important level if you actually get out and vote.”
To illustrate his point, Whitley finished his talk by emphasizing how votes can sometimes come down to single digit numbers and razor-thin margins.
“There are about 15 million registered voters in Texas and if you register to vote, y’all can be 100 of those 15 million,” Whitley said. And if you think it doesn’t matter whether or not you vote, because of how many people are registered, you’re wrong. There are elections in Texas that are decided by fewer people than are in this room right now. There are elections that are decided by single digit numbers of people, so don’t think that your vote doesn’t count, because it does.”
He brought voter registration forms for seniors to fill out at the high school office.
Whitley’s visit drew pushback from the local immigration rights group Mano Amigo. “Whitley makes as much sense as a spokesman for democratic participation as Willie Nelson would for harsher marijuana laws,” spokesman Jordan Buckley said. “If this inept architect of voter suppression thinks he can fool San Marcos into mistaking him as a champ of voting rights, then Whitley is utterly witless.”
