Every Vote Counts in Taney County

   There are 50,000+ people residing in Taney County.  Around 36,000 are Registered Voters.  Around 24,000 usually vote.  Taney County's 19,000 votes are far less than 1% of the total Missouri State votes. A quick stats check for prior elections confirms that it doesn't make any difference who is the candidate...all Republicans get about 19,000 votes.  If Sadam Huisein had been the Republican candidate for Secretary of State instead of Jay Ashcroft, well, he might have only gotten 18,000 votes...anyway.

     It's almost "COVID ELECTION" time.  Will there be notable changes in Taney County's rigid voting pattern?  Will a smaller or greater number of Republicans/Democrats show up or successfully register their vote by either "mail-in" or "absentee" ballot?  My speculation is that there will be virtually no change in the pattern, either as to vote count or party preference.  

     I have watched the local populous reaction to the onset of COVID presence.  Our County was slower than the Country as a whole to react.  (This would likely be true in the event of an alien encounter....our County is either existential or primitive, depending on your perspective.)  As the threat reality sunk in, there was a brief period of self-imposed shut-down, seemingly more pronounced than for the country as a whole.  (Those running "existential software" behavior profiles, react strongly to immanent threats because they have less history of adaptive behavior.)  As the threat was publicly digested and contextualized, almost exactly 72% of the populous concluded that the threat was "fake news" and disregarded all "fragile recommendations"  (There were virtually no masks at Walmart on the 4th of July)  Then, as COVID stats turned local, Republican leadership reversed their position and mandated a "mask only" public.  Almost instantly our monolithic community shifted to almost total mask compliance, adapting a conviction that "with mask", life had returned to normal.  

     Taney County has returned to normal, albeit with masks.  There will be virtually no absentee voting and the election results will look very much like 2016.  There will be no voter fraud.  Indeed, the Republican leadership initiative, mid-COVID to sway the mail-in/absentee count by making it complicated to vote absentee, will prove to have been unnecessary.  Yes, all of the, I presume, purposeful nonsense regarding multiple ballot applications, confused instructions, contradictory notarization requirements, etc. will prove pointless.  If the Taney County Clerk publishes the number of absentee-mail-in ballots, it will likely be less than 1000, virtually all from the less than 5000 Democratic voters.

In Taney County, we will forever be in a "Republican State of Mind"