2026 Election: What is on Texas' voter ballots?

So just to be clear, the Electoral College doesn't really play a part right now because of the three branches of government. You've got legislative, executive, and judicial. Now, executive is the president. They enforce the laws. You vote on the president, of course, but not this time. Now, we also have the judicial branch, which is the Supreme Court. We never vote for the Supreme Court. You do have some influence, though, because you vote on the other two. For instance, the president will nominate the Supreme Court justices, and then Congress will confirm that nominee to put them on the bench. Now, Congress is where it's at today. This is where we're focused in both the upper and the lower chamber in the Senate and in the House of Representatives as well. So if it feels like you're always voting, we are. We just had the primary in March. We had a November election for an off year, which is more local. And then we had this election, which is a midterm, which is the middle of a presidential term. So that's why it feels like you're always at the ballot box and you're racking up the I voted stickers. At least I hope you are. All right. Here in Texas, we always Everything is bigger and that counts with your ballot too. 228 races across the state. No, thank goodness you don't have to vote on all of these, but you're looking at representation at the local level, the state level, the national federal level as well. So depending on where you live, for instance, like in Harris County, you had up to around over a hundred races. So yeah, you didn't have to vote for all of them, but you did have to vote for a lot. So this is going to I'm going to represent you not only at the Federal level but at state as well So if you're wondering right Texas only had two U.S. senators and Ted Cruz wasn't on the ballot. You're right. You were voting for a U.S. senator, which is representing you in D.C., but you also were voting for a state senator who represents you in Austin. You also have representatives that you send to D.C. and to Austin as well. Now, in Austin, though, you get more representation on this particular election in this particular ballot for all the statewide officers. They represent you in Austin. Those are things like the governor, the lieutenant governor, the attorney general, the railroad Road Commissioner, the General Land... commissioner, then also the comptroller. I know we had questions about you know what is, what is the comptroller? Those are the people who represent you in Austin. These are people that you can dri- ve up to Austin and you can sit and wait in their offices that you can go to, meetings you can go to, right, that you can drive to. So it's really important to go down ballot, even though this is getting all the attention countrywide, you know, nationwide. Everyone's looking at Texas because it's considered a battleground state for the first time in several decades since the 1980s. So this is why you want to focus on your down ballot races as well, because you're voting on who represents you in several different areas around the state and around the country. Caroline.