Abraham Lincoln once said about elections that “It is the people’s business – the election is in their hands. If they turn their backs to the fire, and get scorched in the rear, they’ll find that they have got to ‘sit’ on the ‘blister’.” In many ways that is how I feel about the election this year.

There is so much at stake in the general election on November 8 that it is hard for me to fathom why some people would choose not to cast their vote. When we choose not to vote, we are essentially allowing others to choose the path forward for our country, for our state, for our counties, and even for our local communities.

While most counties in the Panhandle have a good record for turning out the vote, there are some counties that do not fare so well. Those counties in the Panhandle which turned out the highest percentage of registered voters for the 2022 May 10 primary election were Arthur County at 60 percent, Garden County at 57 percent, and Morrill County at 54.6 percent. To the contrary, those counties with the lowest voter turnout were Cheyenne County at 26 percent, Scotts Bluff County at 22 percent, and Box Butte County at only 20 percent.

One of the reasons why this election is so important relates to the education of our children. Voters on November 8 will have the opportunity to vote for who should represent them on the State Board of Education, which has been running out of control for several years now, especially in regards to reforming the State’s standards on sex education. The situation at the State Board of Education is so bad that last week I, along with a group of other like-minded Senators from across the State, had to call for an investigation in regards to the teaching of Critical Race Theory in our schools. Voters have the opportunity to effect change for the better and to begin the process of weeding out CRT from our education system simply by voting on November 8.

Another important issue relates to ballot initiatives that will appear on your ballot this year. One of those ballot measures relates to voter identification. Once passed by voters, Initiative 432 would require voters to show a valid photo identification card whenever they vote. In order to protect the integrity of our elections, voter identification has become essential. However, this ballot measure is not without its problems. Because many voters in the Panhandle vote through the mail, State Senators would get tasked with the very difficult problem of having to work out how voter identification would work with mail-in ballots, and that is not an easy problem to solve.

Another important ballot initiative relates to raising the minimum wage. Initiative 433 would raise the State’s minimum wage incrementally each year until it finally peaks at $15.00 per hour in the year 2026. Historically, raising the minimum wage has never worked. The reason that it does not work is because it is impossible to successfully tax businesses. Businesses in a capitalistic economy always pass their taxes onto consumers in the form of higher prices, and it is no different with the minimum wage. Minimum wage laws force businesses to pass on their added expenses to consumers in the form of high prices. In other words, raising the minimum wage would raise everyone’s cost of living through inflation, and the last thing Americans need right now is to worsen the problem of inflation that is already plaguing the American economy.

For these reasons and more citizens in the Panhandle need to vote in the November 8 election. My hope and my prayer is that no county in the Nebraska Panhandle should see a voter turnout of less than fifty percent of registered voters this year for the general election. Then, on November 9, I, like many of you, will rejoice that all of the lawn signs and political commercials on television will finally come to an end.