Not protecting the voice of small counties in Texas will have disastrous consequences; property rights matter

Dwayne Stovall
Texan
RPT 2018 Delegate
Candidate for U.S. Senate (2020)

There is no confusion when it comes to the difference between centralized power and a Republican form of government.

June 13, 2018
There is an easy to understand plan being put forward by conservative Republicans which would stop the centralization of power in a handful of the largest counties in the Lone Star State and protect the republican form of representative government that is guaranteed in both the State and federal Constitution.

The plan has been very well received.

The idea is to raise the threshold for amending the Texas Constitution, which currently only requires a simple majority of the voting population to ratify, to a more stringent requirement which would make it necessary for three-fourths of the counties to approve an amendment in order for it to be ratified.

The reasoning behind the proposed plan to change the way we amend the Constitution in Texas is simple:

SCALE

Texas is a large State with a population of almost 30 million people that is constantly increasing. This increase in population is heavily weighted in only 5 of the 254 counties (Bexar, Dallas, Harris, Tarrant, and Travis) and, due to the way Texas amends its Constitution, power is being centralized in these same counties at an alarming rate. In just a few years these few counties will have total control of the government of Texas.

This means that the form of government in Texas is becoming less and less republican with each passing day.

At some point in the near future the lives and property rights of millions of Texans in rural counties, some living over 500 miles away from the largest counties, will be ruled over by people they will never meet and can never influence.

The proposed plan to modify how the Texas Constitution is amended has been discussed for a number of years across the State and has been submitted by numerous county delegations as a 2018 GOP platform resolution at the RPT Convention where it has found even more support. The proposal is also expected to find strong support and sponsors in both chambers of the Texas Legislature in the upcoming session.

The argument has been made that those who support using a three-fourths of the counties requirement in Texas for ratification of an amendment, which is the same as the three-fourths of the States required to ratify in the federal Constitution, are confused about the relationship between States and the federal government with the relationship between our State and county governments. This is not only not true; it is a non-sequitur.

It has been said that the State government created the counties, and under the restrictions of Article 9, Section 1 of the Texas constitution, so this is dangerous because the State can mold and sculpt counties as it sees fit, which is all true, but those arguments miss the point entirely; who controls the Texas Constitution?

What happens when the Constitution, meaning the entire government, is wholly controlled by the people in just a handful of counties?

It has been argued that by raising the threshold for ratification to require three-fourths of the counties – 191 — to approve, the Texas legislature would somehow be enabled to create even more amendments than it already does. This is just silly; it makes it much less likely.

The fact remains; if we do not change the way we amend the Texas State Constitution, we will continue to centralize power in the hands of a few counties, continue to become less and less republican (in more ways than one), and one day someone in a county like Tom Green or Yoakum will wake up to a constitutional amendment passed by people hundreds of miles away in larger counties that they cannot influence, that strips them of their property rights by forcibly taking water from their land and pumping it to a metropolitan area.

And they will do this, not because it’s righteous, but simply because they can.

I ask that every republican Texan join me in supporting this plan to protect our republican form of government, and in rejecting the centralization of power taking place in the Lone Star State.

In liberty,

Dwayne Stovall
Texan
RPT 2018 Delegate
Candidate for U.S. Senate (2020)

#2020sComing #LessDCMoreTX #PuttingTexasFirst #BeReady