Early voting in the March 5 primary election ends Friday with a host of candidates on the ballot in both parties, including president, U.S. Senate, all 38 Texas U.S. representatives, all 150 Texas House representatives, and down to local races for district attorney, sheriff and other positions.
Check with your local elections office for more information or go to votetexas.gov.
A record number of Texans are registered to vote ahead of the primary election, according to Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson. More than 17.9 million people are registered to vote in Texas, which is one million more than were registered ahead of the March 2020 primaries.
The increase is being attributed to population growth and does not necessarily mean a higher voter turnout. Brandon Rottinghaus, a University of Houston political science professor, said most people “register to vote out of reflex,” the San Antonio Express-News reported.
“Just because a person’s registered doesn’t mean they’re going to vote,” Rottinghaus said. “They may be registered for all kinds of reasons that are disassociated from their desire to actually go vote.”
State has spent $148 million busing migrants Texas has spent $148 million since April 2022 busing migrants to other states, according to kut.org. As of Jan. 24, more than 102,000 migrants have been transported to New York, Chicago, Denver, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
“It certainly is a great deal of money to be spent,” Ray Perryman, the president of the Waco-based economic research company The Perryman Group, said.
The busing program is part of Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star border security initiative, which thus far has cost the state $10 billion — more than the operating budgets of Delaware and Vermont, according to the report.
Abbott has said he intends to keep busing migrants to other states.
Texas opts out of summer lunch program
The state has opted not to participate in a federal program to help low-income parents buy groceries for their children in the summer, when free school meals are unavailable, the Texas Tribune reported.
Qualifying families would have received $120 per child through a pre-loaded card, with the state receiving $450 million in federal tax dollars for 3.8 million children eligible for the program.
The reason for not participating is a lack of time to coordinate and direct distribution of the preloaded cards, according to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. Texas is one of 15 states not participating in the program, which was announced in late December.
Student loan forgiveness affects 14,510 Texans
President Joe Biden’s latest round of student loan forgiveness includes 14,510 Texans, according to The Dallas Morning News. That wipes out almost $117 million in debt under the SAVE plan, which is intended to make it easier to repay student loans while offering debt forgiveness for longtime borrowers.
“The SAVE plan reflects our unapologetic commitment to deliver as much relief as possible to as many borrowers as possible as quickly as possible,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said.
Borrowers who didn’t receive an email can log into student.aid.gov to check their loan status.
Gary Borders is a veteran award-winning Texas journalist. He published several community newspapers in Texas during a 30-year span, including in Longview, Fort Stockton, Nacogdoches, Lufkin and Cedar Park. Email: [email protected].
