Austin City Council Increasing Election Spending

The latest in Austin news is that the Austin City Council decided to do what they wanted. Who's surprised by politicians getting the last word? I'm not. Blue Dot Blues' writer MJ Samuelson wrote about how the city council refused to change the council elections to November 2012 instead of May of the same year. (MJ Samuelson. Austin City Council actively disenfranchising voters. Blue Dot Blues. Tuesday, October 11, 2011.)

While both Austin ISD and the Austin Community College district agreed that moving the elections to November would be a good idea, the city council thought otherwise. Samuelson believes that the Austin City Council is pretty ridiculous for thinking that leaving the elections in May is anywhere near a good idea. She states that leaving the elections in May would cost the Austin taxpayers around $1.2 million (not including the $500,000 estimated run-off). A different source I checked for research had stated that moving the elections to November would cost about $900,000. I mean, no big deal, right? It's only about a $300,000 difference that could've gone to more important departments, like say, education? But clearly Texas isn't big on the education department nowadays.

Anyways, back to Samuelson. She believes that this may be a way for the city council to protect themselves from "voters [that] aren't smart enough to grasp all the issues on the long general election ballot in November." We all know politicians will do whatever they can to win, so that comes as no surprise to me. They just don't seem to care about how much easier it'll be to inform the public on when elections will be so they can all perform their jobs as responsible citizens. Seems like the only way for uninformed voters to make any change in when elections will be held is by doing what we do best. Protest. If you want your voice heard, make it heard. Samuelson's blog post provides several ways we can all get our voice heard, and hopefully save the state $300,000 and our cars some gas from having to travel to voting sites several times throughout next year.

As far as the research I’ve done on the subject, Samuelson seems to be on track. Her figures match up to those of major newspapers, such as the Austin American Statesman, as well as other Texas based blogs like Empower Texans. Besides, if she’s trying to get Austinites more informed and motivated to change the way politics is working these days in their own city, I’d think she was pretty credible. I completely agree with her, if we want any change, we’ll have to work for it.