Too many things are broken in our world, our country, our Commonwealth. It is my nature to try to fix things that are broken, and sometimes that involves pointing out what is broken so that it can be fixed. But sometimes we all need to take a look at what it would mean for all this brokenness to be fixed.

Although Robert Kennedy famously appropriated the quote for a campaign speech, it was George Bernard Shaw who first said, “Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.”

Today, let’s dream.

I dream of a country that once again honors the Judeo-Christian faith of its founders, a country that honors God by holding to a consistent moral standard based on the written Word of God.

I dream of a country in which our schools teach our children God’s principles for living as they once were taught before the Earl Warren Supreme Court kicked God out. I dream of schools where students learn the truth of the greatness of America rather than be brainwashed by socialistic curriculums and textbooks.

I dream of a Commonwealth where the citizens take upon themselves their rightful responsibility to insure voter integrity rather than complain that someone else didn’t do their job.

I dream of a Commonwealth that returns to the economic prosperity provided by capitalism, where everyone, by the exercise of their own effort, intelligence, and creativity, has the opportunity to make an honest living and support their families.

I dream of a country in which family is the backbone of our strength, where married couples stay married to each other, where women are honored, loved, and protected by those who love them, and where men know how to wisely lead and provide for their families.

I dream of a country where every boy has a father to admire and who will teach him how to be a man.

I dream of a Republican Party where people can have spirited debate and then reach a decision about a plan of action – and once that decision is made everyone immediately gets on board to make the decision work.

I dream of a nation of churches that worship the omnipotent God rather than a series of rules or societal constructs. I dream of a Church that recognizes how extremely important the Christian faith was in the founding of this country and in the codifying of the freedoms that God Himself gave us. I dream of a Church that wakes up to its current responsibilities before God to “rule over the land” rather than ignore God’s direction in favor of their own private goals and plans.

I dream of a country where everyone takes seriously the responsibility of maintaining what we were given 245 years ago and are quickly losing because of apathy and petty squabbles.

Those are the dreams. The “why not” is simple. We don’t see the big picture. We don’t “keep the main thing the main thing.” We don’t realize that by focusing solely on the things that our freedoms allow us to do rather than on the freedoms that allow us to do those things, we stand an excellent chance of losing those freedoms to power hungry individuals who think of us as subjects not citizens. We don’t realize that we live in an evil world and that without our citizens turning to God and pleading with him to have mercy on our sinful country, evil will prevail.

The “why not’s” are powerful, but I also dream that our citizens can overcome those “not’s” and achieve their dreams.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

Virginia Republicans will select their nominees for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General this year in a manner that has left a few Republican a bit nonplussed. The Republican Party of Virginia’s State Central Committee (SCC) has chosen to host an “unassembled” convention. This means that delegates will not assemble at a central location but will instead travel to one of over 30 voting locations around the state to cast their votes.

The other big difference in this year’s nomination process is the use of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV). The intent is to have the nominee selected by majority vote – defined as 50 percent of votes cast plus one. Because there are officially seven candidates for the Republican nomination for Governor, six candidates vying to be the candidate for Lieutenant Governor, and four candidates for the nomination for Attorney General, the likelihood of one candidate for each office winning a majority vote on the first ballot is too small to contemplate.

Seven candidates vied for the Lieutenant Governor nomination at the 2013 GOP convention. None of the candidates garnered a majority on the first ballot. Under the rules of that convention, the two candidates who garnered the fewest votes were dropped from the ballot, and the delegates voted again among the five remaining candidates. When there was still no majority winner, the lowest vote-getter in that round of balloting was dropped, and delegates voted for one of the four candidates remaining on the ballot. Because it was a tightly contested race, round after round of balloting continued until the final ballot between the last two candidates still in the running was finally held at around midnight – fourteen hours after the convention began.

The idea behind Ranked Choice Voting is to avoid having the delegates hang around their respective voting locations all day waiting for each successive ballot to be held. Instead, RCV allows delegates to “rank” the candidates in the order in which they each would like to see the respective candidates be the nominee.

As an example, in a six-person race one delegate selects Boris Norris as her first choice. [Obviously, all names in this example are fictitious.] But on the unfortunate chance that Boris is dropped from the ballot at some point, the delegate lists Betty Getty as her second choice. Then the delegate lists William Williams and Addie Gaddy as her third and fourth choices respectively, followed by Ha Chu in fifth. The delegate can then put a six by Ramona Pomona, her least favorite candidate, or just leave the space blank.

On the first round, Boris Norris gets this delegate’s vote. After the votes have all been tabulated, no candidate has gotten a majority, so the two lowest vote-getters, William Williams and Ramona Pomona are dropped from the ballot. Now instead of making all the delegates come back and vote again, the tellers simply take the ballots that put William and Ramona as their first choice and give them to the candidates who were marked as the second choice – on the assumption that the delegates would have voted for their second choice candidates if they had actually cast a second ballot. The same for those ballots that listed Ramona as first choice. In the event that a ballot had William as first choice and Ramona as second choice or vice versa, the ballot would go to the candidate who was marked as the third choice, since neither William or Ramona was still in the running.

If no candidate receives a majority of the vote on the second round of counting, the lowest scoring candidate is dropped, and the process repeats until one candidate receives a majority of the votes cast for the desired office. The time-consuming part of the process is in the tabulation, but only a relatively few volunteers are required to stay the whole day to count the results. The delegates who took time to cast ballots can then get on with their day.

Some have voiced the opinion that RCV is a way to manipulate the election. That is not the case at all. There is nothing in the RCV methodology that would give one candidate an advantage over another. The SCC has been very clear that they are focused on giving every candidate an equal shot at the nomination in a fair and transparent process that also allows as many delegates as possible to make their voices heard in the nominating process.

Every candidate will have observers at each location and at the main tabulation center to protect their interests. Every candidate has an equal opportunity to sign up as many delegates as possible who will make them their first choice, but also to find delegates who will list them as their second or third choice in case the first choice is not a high vote-getter. Every candidate’s hardcore supporters can be sure that even though RCV will not provide an advantage to their candidate, neither will it impede their ability to win. And that’s the way it should be.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

Now that we have settled that Republicans will nominate our candidates for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General at an unassembled convention, each Congressional district chair is working to establish where the delegates from units within his/her district will vote. The State Central Committee determined the maximum number of voting sites in each district with a total across the Commonwealth of up to 37 sites – which for financial and logistic reasons is probably too many.

The Sixth Congressional District (CD 6) was allocated up to four sites but is hosting only two. Instead, we are sharing a site with the Fifth District (CD 5) and sharing another site with the Ninth District (CD 9).

The plan calls for Amherst, Bedford, and Lynchburg to vote at Tree of Life Church in Campbell County, literally across the street from Lynchburg. Nine units from CD 5 will also vote there. Botetourt and Roanoke Counties and Roanoke City will vote at the Salem Civic Center with several units from CD 9. These are the locations where those units voted in last August’s unassembled convention.

We will have a new site this year in Shenandoah County. Page, Shenandoah, and Warren Counties will vote at the Shenandoah County Fairgrounds.

All of our other units – Augusta, Bath, Harrisonburg, Highland, Rockingham, Staunton, and Waynesboro will vote at the Augusta County Government Center in Verona as they did last year. Rockbridge Area will vote at Verona this year rather than at Salem as they did last year.

There had been talk of Rockingham and Harrisonburg having their own site this year, but after consulting with both unit chairs, we determined that joining the other units in Verona was in their best interests.

Delegates can vote at their respective units’ assigned locations anytime between 9:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. – please don’t wait until the last minute – in an effort to spread the traffic out over the course of the day.

Each delegate will only need to vote one time because we will be using Ranked Choice Voting. I’ve had several questions about how Ranked Choice Voting works, and frankly it is easier to do than to explain. There are ten candidates for the GOP nomination for Governor, five candidates for the Lieutenant Governor nomination, and four candidates for the Attorney General nomination. A candidate will have to win a majority of the votes to become the nominee.

Let’s say you want candidate Donald Duck to be the Lieutenant Governor nominee. You place a 1 next to his name on the ballot. If Donald weren’t running, you would want R. R. Hood to win, so you place a 2 next to Ms. Hood’s name. Your third choice is Jack Sparrow, so you place a 3 by his name, then a 4 by the name of Wile E. Coyote, and either a 5 or no number next to your least favorite candidate. You likewise vote your choices for Governor and for Attorney General and turn your ballot in to be counted after all ballots have been cast.

The teller team will count all the ballots for your unit and determine how many #1 votes each candidate got for each office. If no candidate gets at least 50 percent plus one vote, then – and this is just by way of explanation since the rules of the convention have not yet been adopted – the teller committee would find which candidate got the fewest votes. And sad to say, because of his temper issues, your first choice, Donald Duck, got the fewest votes and is no longer in the running. Now the teller committee takes all of the ballots that marked Mr. Duck as their first choice and divides them out to the candidates who were marked as second choice on those ballots. Your ballot would go to Ms. Hood, since she was your number two choice. Then if no candidate has gotten at least 50 percent plus one votes, the Teller Committee again take the lowest vote getter still in the running and divide his/her votes out among the remaining candidates. In the second round of counting, Jack Sparrow’s shady past has cost him votes, but since he was not your number two choice Ms. Hood keeps your vote. However, since Ms. Hood is out of the running after the third round of balloting, Mr. Coyote would get your vote, since Mr. Sparrow has already been dropped in a previous round. The candidate in each race who gets 50 percent plus 1 vote (a majority) becomes the nominee.

As I said, it’s easier to do than explain. The important thing is that you sign up as a delegate and vote on May 8.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

Back when the Christian church and extended families were accorded a more prominent place in American society, families would take care of their own members when they were sick and unable to take care of themselves. And for those in need who did not have families or for families who did not have the means to care for their own, the church stepped up and helped. It was a process that maintained family ties and built cohesion in the community.

Then people got too busy, and someone decided that government could do a better job of taking care of people than the local community. Thus, Medicaid was born.

Now anyone who has taken an honest look at history realizes that governments do very little as well or as efficiently as private citizens and private organizations. The government generally goes with a one size fits all approach that is cumbersome, slow, inefficient, and expensive. And the government doesn’t pay for their waste. The government just raises taxes on private citizens who, if they were doing things themselves, would do the job much more efficiently, economically, and effectively.­­

A couple of years ago, Virginia was enticed by the federal government to expand Medicare to cover more poor Virginians. That seems like a great idea until you realize that the federal government’s financial enticement to the state only lasted a couple of years. Now we can’t reduce the number of people on Medicaid, but we can’t pay for it either. Therefore, taxes have to go up. So not only does Medicaid serve more people, but it creates more poor people – who will also need Medicaid – by unfairly taking money from otherwise self-sufficient people to pay for other people’s healthcare and by taxing small businesses out of existence, which puts their employees out of work as well. It’s a wicked, downward spiral that provides further evidence that the government cannot do much of anything as well as the private sector.

One really does have to be poor to be eligible for Medicaid. For example, to have Medicaid pay his/her nursing home bill, a person must reduce his/her assets down to a maximum of $2,000, with marginal exceptions for a private residence when a spouse or dependent children still live there. They are not allowed to just give it away, because after the patient and the spouse die, the government will come after the estate and force the heirs to repay any money that the Medicaid recipient left them or even gave to them years before becoming eligible for Medicaid. The government wants to recoup what they spent on the patient’s nursing home care.

Medicaid is a bad deal for anyone who actually has much of value such as a car, a home, their mother’s jewelry. There will be no inheritance except for what is left after the government recoups their costs.

Virginia did adopt a law about fifteen years ago that provides a way to escape some of the assault on a recipient’s “estate” no matter how small. It’s called Virginia’s Long-Term Care Partnership Program. The legal language is found in Virginia’s Administrative Code (14VAC5-200-205). I don’t suggest you look it up. A licensed insurance agent has to take an eight-hour course to understand it, never mind someone just trying to make sense of it.

To illustrate, imagine a person who buys a “qualified” long-term care insurance policy that has a maximum benefit of $100,000. (The average nursing home costs $125,000 per year, and the cost goes up about five percent per year.) When the patient enters a nursing home, the money for the patient’s care has to come from the policy first. After the benefit has been exhausted, Medicaid kicks in. The difference here is that because the partner policy paid $100,000 toward the patient’s care, the patient only has to reduce their assets down to $102,000 instead of only $2,000. Since the patient provided $100,000 toward their own expenses through a “qualified” plan, the state considers that the money from the policy replaces the assets that would otherwise be seized by the government to pay for care.

It is complicated with lots of ins and outs. Anyone considering such a move must consult a licensed agent who is also trained in long-term care to figure out how and whether such a plan would help them keep the government out of their family’s pockets.

This all sounds complicated because government always complicates things. Imagine how much simpler life was when families, with support from their churches, took on themselves the responsibility for their own. It was certainly more relaxing than having the government messing up the process and spending far too much in the process.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

The details of the method by which Republicans will nominate their candidates for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General should have been settled the second week of December. Unfortunately, a group of diehard obstructionists on the State Central Committee (SCC) refused to join the majority to make the one change in the State Party Plan necessary in order to have the unassembled convention that the majority wanted to host. The obstreperous cabal of individuals – who refused to give up hope that they could somehow threaten, cajole, annoy, and outlast the majority until the majority finally gave in and gave them what they wanted – came up short, but not for lack of trying.

On Friday night, March 12, the issue was finally settled when the SCC adopted an amendment to the Party Plan that was hammered out almost at the last minute – despite weeks of efforts by the majority – when the minority negotiators finally decided that they were out of options. (The vote was 56 to 15 with two individuals recusing themselves. This provided more than the 75% vote required to adopt a Party Plan amendment.) Even though the original location for the single-site convention that had been on the docket since early December did not work out, the majority had a written agreement with another venue that was willing to host the entire event. This meant that the RPV could go ahead with the single site convention – although almost every SCC member wanted multiple polling locations – if the minority failed to budge from their recalcitrance.

At that point, the minority apparently decided to cut their losses and take what they could get. The majority wanted to have between 24 and 33 polling locations spread around the Commonwealth so that Republicans all over Virginia could vote for their nominee in locations convenient to their homes. The minority wanted as many as 66, but finally settled for 37. This still leaves quality control issues because of the number of trained volunteers and supervisory personnel required to operate all of the polling sites in a consistent manner statewide. Increasing the number of polling sites to unmanageable levels is an open invitation for mistakes, malfeasance, and challenges of the results.

In the amendment as adopted, each congressional district can establish up to a set number of polling places: First, 3; Second, 5; Third, 3; Fourth, 5; Fifth, 4; Sixth, 4; Seventh, 4; Eighth, 1; Ninth, 6; Tenth, 1; and Eleventh 1. The majority wanted to put the most polling locations in the geographically largest districts –  the Fifth, Sixth, and Ninth. The minority wanted to put more polling places in relatively compact districts such as the Second, Third, and Fourth. The suspicion among many SCC members is that the minority believes that candidates for governor and lieutenant governor who come from those areas will benefit by high delegate turnout and multiple polling locations. If they could have stopped the geographical imbalance, the majority would have, but the amendment would not have passed without the minority getting something out of it that they wanted.

The minority complained that the majority was trying to limit the number of Republicans who could take part in the nomination process. That is patently untrue. The majority were the ones who pushed the idea of removing the cap on how many delegates each unit could elect to represent them. That Party Plan amendment passed on Friday night as well. This means that units do not have the worry about meeting tight deadlines with their mass meetings. While units still have to make a mass meeting call in order to allow voters to apply to be delegates, they do not have to actually meet to determine who will get to be a delegate because every qualified voter who files will be elected. Unit chairs will still need to certify that each of their unit’s delegates meet the Article I requirements of the Party Plan.

Even though there will be an unlimited number of delegates this year, weighted voting is still in effect. That means that each unit has a set number of votes that they can cast. They will divide the number of votes the unit is allowed to cast by the number of delegates elected. The result is the total vote each delegate can actually cast. For example, Chesterfield County has 606 votes to cast. If they have 2000 delegates, each delegate will have 0.3 vote. As a result, candidates have to pay attention to all units. They can’t just recruit thousands of delegates from one or two areas of the state and still hope to win.

At the end of the day, SCC passed an amended convention call that reflects the changes brought about by adoption of the amendment. That amended call should be posted on the RPV website within a very few days.

Learn about all sixteen candidates for statewide office. File to become a delegate to the convention. Go vote for the candidates of your choice. If you have questions, talk with your local unit chair, or contact your SCC representative.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.