Precinct 34 - Let's Go Vote!

 Dear Voters,

If you have not yet voted, now is the time to vote.  Today is Thursday 10/31.  The last two days of early voting are Thursday 10/31 and Friday 11/1, from 7 am to 7 pm.  Here is a link to the early voting locations.

Election Day is Tuesday, November 5 and here is a link to a list of the Election Day voting sites.

Here is a tip:  after you read your printed ballot, you read it to make sure it is what you expect.  Next, if you want to double check the bar code markings to see if they match the printed names:  you can put your marked ballot back into the ballot marking device, called an Express Vote, and read the display of your voting choices.  This way you can check the bar code markings for accuracy.

For people who really want to test the system, you can record the number printed on your ballot, on the back.  It is possible to file a request for your ballot image and you can see what was actually recorded, but you need your ballot number to find your ballot.  If you bring in a printed sample ballot, you mark it as you planned to vote, and then you write the ballot number on your sample ballot and you can compare the ballot image that is stored to your sample ballot to confirm that what is in the system is what you intended.  Most people won't do this, but a few people might.  Here is a link to my previous post about how to find your sample ballot.

Short List of Recommendations

Federal
For President:  Donald Trump                  
For Senator:  Ted Cruz
For Congress:  Keith Self           

State
Justice, Supreme Court, Place 4:  John Devine
Presiding Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals: David Schenck,
Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 7:  Gina Parker
Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 8:  Lee Finley
For State Board of Education:  Pam Little

County
Sheriff:  Jim Skinner
Tax Assessor:  Scott Grigg

You really want to vote for these people.  Most Republicans go down the whole list and vote for every Republican.  If you don't do that, maybe because so many are unopposed, then make sure you vote for these people.

Sample Ballots for the Nov 5 Election

 Friends and Neighbors,

You can find a sample ballot for the November 5, 2024 election at this website:  https://www.collincountytx.gov/Elections/sample-ballots?electionID=63

There are many ballot styles.  Find the search window and enter your precinct number.

This worked well for me.

Thank you for voting,

Robert

Counterpoint on School Choice

 Dear Friends and Neighbors,

On Tuesday, March 19, 2024 I posted this article:  Why the negative vote against school choice?  (https://voteforcanright.blogspot.com/2024/03/why-negative-vote-against-school-choice.html)

There were many responses, but one was particularly well said. It was from a Republican activist, who gave me permission to share it.  Here it is:

As a homeschooling parent, what I don’t get is how they don’t see you can just refuse the money. Many of us need either our property taxes abolished (fat chance) or to get this ESA (Education Savings Account) money to afford religious schooling for our kids. It’s not fair for us to pay public school taxes AND private school tuition when we don’t use public schools. I have relatives in Texas forced to send their kids to public school because it [school choice in the legislature] didn’t pass yet and already are seeing corrupting effects on their kids. It’s terrible. Also they are naive if they think somehow not taking the money makes them immune to government interference. California has proven this is not true as they don’t give any money but can still heavily interfere with homeschooling. 

Also there is power in numbers. If the majority of public school students go to private schools then the teachers unions will die (they are arguably the greatest threat to the republic), and policymakers will also start to prioritize listening to groups lobbying for home school rights and private school rights more.

Basically right now, the word of the leftist teacher’s unions goes farther in Austin than the conservative Homeschool Association, pass school choice and that flips. A large religious private school association might even form to fight elections to win more rights and a bigger piece of the pie against the teacher’s unions, once all the new funding comes their way.

We need a counterforce against the teacher’s unions and school choice would create that. If we lose a few SCOTUS slots in the coming years they may very well rule California can ban homeschooling despite home schoolers not taking any money. A leftist judge cares not for such distinctions. Besides this doesn’t give any money directly to schools, it gives it to a parental bank account, an “education savings account” that they can then use on schools. Many parents ALREADY do this, you ALREADY can open an Texas ESA and self fund it for a tax free investment account which grows over time and you can use on private schools. So if it were going to magically create strings it’d have done so many years ago.

I hope you find this viewpoint helpful.

Robert

Let us reason together

 Dear Friends and Neighbors,

You might recognize the Bible quote, Isaiah 1:18, where God speaks to Isaiah: "Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD...."  Reason and logic are some of the attributes God gave us when He made us in His own image.  We should use reason and logic when we debate issues, especially when precinct chairs (PCs) speak for or against resolutions, motions, and rules in the Executive Committee (EC), or when there are discussions on Facebook.  But as fallible humans, we make mistakes.  There are entire books that catalog standard logical fallacies, like "the red herring", "the straw-man", and the "Ad Hominem" attack.  Here is a short list that you can download for free:Valid Arguments and Logical Fallacies.  

I have discovered two logical fallacies that are not in the catalogs by listening closely in the EC and  watching pro and con arguments in Facebook (FB) comments.  I will name these errors (1) "false priority" and (2) "inversion."  As volunteers you can watch some of the "debates" on this page:  CollinGOP - Discussion Group.  It's a private group, so you have to ask to join, but since there are already 1,900 members, you should be able to tell the administrator that you are a reliable Republican voter and that they can check on that.

As a simple example of "false priority", imagine that you are 8 years old again, and when you get to the park with your friends and your football, some older kid tells you, "I was here first.  You take your toys and go home."  If that has not happened in your childhood, I am happy for you.  This also happened in the Bible.  In the Gospel of Mark, chapter 9, verses 38 to 40, the disciples complained to Jesus that an outsider was casting out demons, the disciples tried to stop him, and failed.  “Do not stop him,” Jesus replied. For whoever is not against us is for us.

This is a common human failing, believing that because you got there first, you own the playground, or the miracles, or the Republican Party -- this is a false sense of priority.  I just saw this in the "CollinGOP - Discussion Group", where someone says something like "she's only been here 5 minutes and she thinks she can run the party."  When volunteers join the party as PCs and want to improve our community, they are told, as I once was, "be quiet, sit down, and do as I tell you."  This kind of arrogance comes from a false sense of priority, from getting to the playground first.  But if we recognize that this is a logical fallacy, and a common human failing, then we can work together better.

Now I will give you two examples of the logical error that I call "inversion."  In the first example, a person inverts cause and effect.  A friend told me in conversation that a rise in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) causes inflation.   This backwards.  The rise in CPI is one way inflation is measured; it is an effect of inflation, but not the cause.  Milton Friedman has explained that the government printing too much money causes inflation, so that is the cause, and the increase in CPI is how we notice its effect.

Flipping cause and effect is a simple type of logical inversion, but there is another type of logical inversion that is not so obvious, but has huge consequences for our society:  the logical inversion of duties and responsibilities.

In our system of government, we the people vote for our representatives, and then they have a duty to obey the will of the people.  If they let us down, then we replace them in the next election (unless the election is rigged).  The logical inversion that we experience here is when people believe that it is their duty to obey their elected officials.  Yes, many people feel good when they are obedient to someone perceived as their leader.

I am reading a history book now that looks at English political struggles between Tories and Whigs in England in the 1600's.  The author describes the Tories as "authoritarian and servile." Here is a definition of Authoritarian: favoring strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom.  A local example is when CC GOP leadership tried a bait-and-switch trick to sneak someone into the role of party chair.  Some of the PCs were outraged, but some of the PCs were happy to obey.  The PCs who objected to the bait and switch are following the Whig tradition, while the PCs who don't mind are following the Tory tradition.

Remember your history.  The Tories in America during the American Revolution supported the King of England.  The rebels were following the Whig tradition.  The Republican Party was created by Whigs. In our political tradition, our leaders are supposed to serve the people.  The logical inversion happens when the people believe that they are supposed to serve their leaders.  Probably this logical inversion is related to personality types and emotional needs.  Sometimes it is hard to separate logic from emotion, which is why political conflicts sometimes turn into emotional expressions.

I believe that I am seeing friction and hostility by some people who have fallen into the logical errors of "false priority" and "inversion."  I hope that by identifying these logical errors, the different groups within the CC GOP can understand each other better, have better discussions, and better conduct our business.

Thank you for your patience with this complex topic.

Robert

 

 

Shelby's terrible management plan

 Dear Friends,

Shelby Williams has distributed something that he calls his "315 DAY PLAN".  It is a badly flawed document because he does not appear to understand the Collin County Executive Committee (EC),  how it works, and its history.

At the bottom of this email I reproduce the portion of his plan where he proposes changing the party leadership. He says that he wants to "create additional leadership roles."  You need to understand that we have run across this thinking before.  Chairman Mark Reid, in the past, proposed changing the structure of the party in order to create a team of vice presidents that would help him run the party.  The party chair cannot change the structure of the party without the Rules Committee proposing changes to the rules and bylaws in order to implement the changes, and then the EC has to vote to approve the changes.

When Chairman Mark Reid wanted to "create additional leadership roles," the Rules Committee refused to recommend those changes.  I heard the chairman tell the Rules Committee that he would not permit the EC to meet until he got the rule changes that he wanted.  He would not call a meeting.  He broke the party.  We had a big conflict that resulted in his resigning as party chair.  We know that Shelby's plan is terrible because we have seen it happen before, and it broke the party.

We have a recurring problem within the Collin County Republican Party where the party chair gets "full of himself,"  declares that "I can do what I want because I'm the Chairman," and then starts to fight with the EC.  We had the same problem with former chairman Abraham George when he decided to side with the SREC Committeeman against the EC and our work towards endorsing in municipal elections.  The Republican Party of Texas (RPT) supports endorsements in municipal elections.  Mr. George delayed the EC from endorsing candidates in the Princeton municipal elections by not letting us meet for 3 months.  He had to quit for us to endorse!

In the SREC (State Republican Executive Committee), Rolando Garcia is Chairman of the Local Government Committee.  Mr. Garcia has written that Mr. George, "attended an SREC meeting last year for the sole purpose of urging us to stop endorsing conservatives in school board and city council races."   Here's a link to the full story:  https://twitter.com/rdgarcia03/status/1781439071060914478

I am telling you this because I believe that Shelby Williams, if elected party chair, will follow in the footsteps of Mark Reid and Abraham George in  trying to get the EC to bend to his will, and then picking fights with the EC when he does not get his way.  His "315 day plan" is full of ridiculous nonsense.  If you are outside the EC, or new to the EC, then you do not know our history and do not realize that the proposal for "additional leadership roles" is a disaster waiting to happen.

Voting Shelby Williams into the position of party chair would be like giving a loaded gun to a child -- it would lead to much grief.

Thank you for our time on this important issue.

Robert

Excerpt from the 315 day plan

(available in full here:  https://shelbyhwilliams.com/collin-county-gop-chair-my-first-315-day-plan/)

Expand the leadership base to bring additional people to the table. I want to work with the Executive Committee to create additional leadership roles–roles of real responsibility and accountability, not ceremonial titles, and bring people from the various factions to those roles to work together to advance our shared goals. This also necessitates a distinction between committees and teams. We don’t need more committees. We have enough, and they serve a specific and vital purpose. Committees are for focused deliberation, but by their very nature, they’re not action-oriented. Once the Executive Committee approves a course of action, a team, not a committee, is needed to take actual action. I always want to get people doing what they’re best at and what they’re most passionate about. That’s how we unleash organizational potential. We need specific roles for Legislative Action, which Brandon Burden of North Texas Conservatives did phenomenally last session, as well as Community Outreach, which Jessica Bartnick, President of Collin County Conservative Republicans, would be a natural for. We need leaders for Precinct Chair training and development, Toolkit Development, Recruitment, etc.

If you do not have Twitter (aka X), then here is a screenshot of Rolando's post.

Does the Collin County GOP need marriage counseling?

Friends and Neighbors,

Here is a copy of a letter I sent to my fellow precinct chairs.

Fellow Chairs,
Some volunteers have attended the CC GOP executive committee (EC) meetings and have been surprised at the conflict during the meetings.  They talk to me about it.  A visitor cannot begin to understand what is happening or why it is happening.  Some of the precinct chairs (PCs) in attendance, who do not understand Roberts Rules of Order, do not understand what is happening or why.  The meetings have taken on the appearance of a postal chess game, where the moves are complex but happen slowly.  First, I am going to give some "big picture" background by analogy to begin to explain what is happening and why.  Then I will explain some details of what has happened.  Be patient with me, please.

The analogy I am making is based on the Protestant Reformation.  You see, Martin Luther read the Bible and discovered that people are saved by their faith in Christ and not by the power of the church establishment, the Roman Catholic Church at that time.  This understanding of the Bible led to the Protestant Reformation, which led to the Scientific Revolution, which led to the Industrial Revolution,   Huge changes, you see, came about from reading and understanding.

Many volunteers were drawn to the Republican Party by Trump.  In our training we were told that we precinct chairs are essentially free block walkers for candidates.  But some of us read the rules of the CC GOP, and we read Roberts Rules of Order, and we read the Texas Election Code, and we discovered that the county party chair is not our boss.  We discovered that we PCs in the EC are a deliberative body that makes decisions and sets policy.  The Trump activists want to win elections.  The EC voted to create a Candidate's Committee in order to evaluate and endorse candidates in municipal elections because the city charters do not permit us to have a Republican Primary in city elections. By endorsing candidates, voters have suggestions from the party on who to vote for.  The Democratic Party was endorsing their candidates and we wanted to do the same.  I have heard new voters yell during municipal elections, "Where are the Rs"?   We wanted to help our voters with suggestions.  We have new precinct chairs and they need to hear our history, so be patient if you know all of this.

Then EC voted to create a GOTV (Get Out the Vote) committee to help our endorsed candidates in the municipal elections.  The GOTV committee, during last year's election for the Collin College Board of Trustees, made a motion that was passed by the EC to provide "in kind" support for our two candidates in that runoff election, and we won the runoff in a landslide.  Notice that it was a GOTV committee member who made the motion, then the EC that passed the motion that led us to victory.  The EC made the decision and directed the party chair to carry out that decision which led to victory in this race.

The Republican Party of Texas (RPT) also endorses candidates in municipal elections, but the RPT waits for a request from the county party before endorsing.  In our case, a local person in the Republican Party who holds the position of SD8 SREC Committeeman used a new rule to veto our request for endorsements, and the municipal elections in May 2023 were probably the worst in the history of the CC GOP.   

The EC expressed its displeasure with the SD8 SREC Committeeman for vetoing our request for an RPT endorsement, and in the June 12, 2023, meeting, a motion was passed that asked the SD8 SREC Committeeman to resign, which he refused to do.  Was it  just a coincidence that the following EC meeting on July 10, 2023 was shut down by the county chair, Abraham George?  Much work that was planned for the meeting was called “out of order,” and then the meeting was dismissed abruptly by the chair, without a motion to adjourn.  It seemed as though the chair was punishing the EC for asking the SD8 SREC Committeeman to resign.

The EC members went back to read the rule books and discovered that if the party chair wrongly calls our business "out of order", then we can challenge the ruling of the chair.  When the EC members in the August 7, 2023 meeting challenged the ruling of the chair, the party chair became hostile, at one point Abraham George yelled at a lady, "You cannot out bully a bully!"  That was shocking.  The chair actually described himself as a bully.  This meeting was very disorderly because the chair seemed to be losing his temper and improperly used secret ballots to run the clock out on the meeting.  For the 2nd month in a row, the party chair prevented us from accomplishing our work

Then in the next month, in September, the party chairman cancelled the meeting for that month.  Now that the EC learned that it could challenge the ruling of the chair, it seemed as though the party chair was creating an Abraham faction within the party that would vote to support his rulings regardless of the issues.  People were coming up to me and saying, "I stand with Abraham."  It was very strange.  Meanwhile, we had been waiting for months to vote to endorse Republican candidates in the Princeton municipal elections.  

Finally, in the Monday October 9, 2023 EC meeting, Abraham George resigns to run for office, for HD89, and we finally get a chance to vote to endorse the Republicans in the Princeton races.   Later, the EC members from Princeton who got the CC GOP and the RPT endorsements reported that voters came into the polls carrying slate cards that showed the CC GOP and the RPT endorsement logos.  They believed the endorsements helped them win their races in Princeton.

There did seem to be a conflict between the EC on one hand, which wanted to be more competitive with the Democrats, and the party chair and the SD8 SREC Committeeman on the other hand, who did not want us to be endorsing in local elections.

Abraham George was a decent party chair until that month in which the EC asked the SD8 SREC Committeeman to resign.  After that, the party chair appeared to wage war against the EC until he resigned.  The party has been fractured ever since.

Perhaps some of the PCs are sore at the changes made by the newcomers.  The creation of new committees and changes to local elections might not sit well with some people.  Maybe the party does need to bring in someone like a marriage counselor to help the two sides talk to each other and patch up the differences.

Akira Kurosawa made a film named "Rashomon" where the audience is shown an event.  Then that event is seen through the eyes of all the people present, and we discover that they all had different recollections of what they saw.  You might very well remember the events differently than I remember them, but I did run my recollections past a few people to double check my memory.

There is more to say, like improvements to how the two sides interact during the EC meetings, but this email is long enough.  That is a subject for another email.  I hope that this email sheds some light on what has been happening in the CC GOP.  I hope that we can eventually patch things up and work together.

The important take-away is that we have people dedicated to helping the CC GOP win elections and willing to work hard to make that happen.  Whatever divide we have in the party, there are good people on each side of the divide.

Thank you for your patience.  The details go back almost a year.  I hope this explanation is helpful as a starting point for working together in a better fashion.

Robert

Current Revolt spills the beans on Shelby Williams

 Dear Friends and Neighbors,

I subscribe to Current Revolt, an online political periodical.  You usually have to be a subscriber to read their newsletter, so it cannot be forwarded.  You should be aware of a recent issue, which came out Tuesday 4/9/2024.

Here's a quote from the article by Current Revolt about a letter from the Secretary of State's office to the office of the Attorney General.

         In the letter, it alleges that Williams, who is a candidate for Collin County GOP Chair, “engaged in actions aimed at coercing and bribing his runoff opponent Ellen Loveless to withdraw” from her race.

       The letter goes on to state that this offense would qualify as a Class A misdemeanor, and potentially a felony in the third degree. It goes on to ask that a criminal investigation be opened by the Texas AG.

You can download the image of the letter mentioned in the article if you have a subscription.  Assuming you don't, I'll attach a copy for you to read.

Here is the background to the story.  To a room full of precinct chairs (PCs), Shelby Williams explained that he offered Ellen Loveless an honored position in the party if she would quit the race.  He told the PCs that he made the proposition twice, before and after the primary race and he seemed kind of whiny that she refused the offer.

Then after this meeting, we all heard the new temporary party chair take the oath of office, which says that the party chair did not did not offer anything to anybody in the race.  A whole bunch of us thought to ourselves, "Shelby will have to perjure himself if he wins and takes the oath."

My understanding is that someone asked the State of Texas about the potential for perjury with the oath, and the response was that there were more serious issues than perjury with an oath.  The result was a letter sending the matter to the office of the Attorney General, which Current Revolt has spread far and wide.

As much as I personally like Shelby Williams, I've made my position clear that I believe Shelby Williams not only cannot do the job, but he would be a disaster for the party, making really big mistakes.

It looks like Shelby has exceeded my fears even before the primary runoff.  Felony or misdemeanor?   This is just the prelude to the disaster that would befall the party if the leadership role fell into his hands.

Robert

Click on the image of the letter to see a larger version, which you can download.