The State of Texas: It's The Last Day You Can Register To Vote

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Craft beer is the devil’s craft.”

—The Anchor of Hope Baptist Church in Canyon via a full-page ad placed in the Canyon Times.The ad warned readers that drinking booze could cause problems of biblical proportions, like losing your kingdom, losing a war, and slipping into a coma. Serious stuff. But according to the Houston Chronicle, the church’s advertising strategy backfired when a local bar’s special deal went viral: bring in a copy of the newspaper ad, get a dollar off your bill.

BIG NEWS

Sign Up
Tuesday is the very last day you can register in Texas to vote for the upcoming election, so if you haven’t done that yet, go do it. Go do it right now. Right now. Don’t know how to register? Go here. Still confused? The Houston Chronicle has a helpful explainer that explores the ins-and-outs of voting in Texas, and Houston Public Media is here to help you, specifically, Voter Who Waited Until The Last Minute To Register. Some important things to know: if you’re not 18 yet but you will be by the time November 8 (Election Day) rolls around, you can still register to vote; if you have a felony conviction that you’re currently serving a sentence for (which includes being on parole or probation), then you can’t vote; if you’re doing time for a misdemeanor, though, you’re good to go; and if you go to college in Texas but your home base is elsewhere, you can still register to vote in Texas.Don’t know if you’re already registered or not? Find out here. If you want to register to vote but you also want to eat tacos, don’t worry, you don’t have to choose.You can’t register online in Texas, but just dig deep and light some sort of flame within yourself to register, whether it’s the motivation to do your civic duty, the sudden recognition of this presidential election’s “fate-of-the-world-is-at-stake” vibe, or, you know, tacos, because that’s fine too. And, finally, if the stuff hits the fan and you’re just having a hard time trying to register, you can always bling the Texas Secretary of State’s hotline at 800-252-VOTE for help.

MEANWHILE, IN TEXAS

Cruzin’ Forward
Senator Ted Cruz doubled down on backing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Monday during a visit to Muleshoe,where he ate brisket tacos and beef enchiladas at a Mexican restaurant (he said they were “delicious,” and he’s standing by that endorsement so far). According to the Texas Tribune, an interviewer asked Cruz point-blank if he was still supporting Trump after a tape surfaced on Saturday that caught Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women in 2005.”I am supporting the Republican nominee because I think Hillary Clinton is an absolute disaster,” Cruz replied. According to Politico, Cruz had tossed and turned about whether he’d drop his recent endorsement of Trump, but apparently he still views Trump as the best choice, despite Trump’s lewd remarks about women, his accusation that Cruz’s father was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and his tweets that essentially called Cruz’s wife, Heidi, ugly.

Damaged Goods
We have some more details about what happened when a 22-year-old man broke into the Capitol Building over the weekend and damaged the portrait of Governor Fletcher Stockdale, possibly our state’s least-relevant governor of all time. According to the Austin American-Statesman, Tanner Christian Graeber of Fort Worth scaled the scaffolding outside the Capitol and broke into a second-story window. Once inside, he chucked the oil painting of Stockdale (and a fire extinguisher, apparently just for good measure) down from the third story of the rotunda. The Texas State Preservation Board estimates the damage to the painting will cost $10,000 to fix, which is pretty incredible considering Stockdale was only governor for three months. Meanwhile, Deadspin found a bystander’s video recording of Graeber climbing the scaffolding outside. Still no word on why Graeber went after Stockdale’s portrait, which is all anyone really wants to know at this point, but the bystander who took the video seems to have some idea why Graeber, who has red hair, committed the oddball crime, shouting to him: “Oh, you’re a ginger. No wonder you’re so crazy!”

Listless
Beaumont is the bottom-dweller in a lot of lists, and the Beaumont Enterprise recently set out to investigate why. “Sad, miserable, uneducated, unsafe for women: That’s Beaumont, if you believe the lists and surveys the city seems to make with depressing regularity,” the Enterprise writes. Beaumont’s been named one of the ten “most ghetto cities” in Texas, one of the worst places for singles in the U.S., and one of the worst cities in Texas for families, among other low rankings. A lot of these lists are based on data sets for example, the Enterprise found that the “worst city for singles” list was compiled using mostly U.S. Census data on the number of men and women who have never married. Beaumont also has a high concentration of poverty, high unemployment rates and higher crime rates than a lot of other cities, which won’t help them in any numbers game. But there’s also a subjective nature to these lists, which is why Beaumont residents may feel like they don’t always get a fair shake. “While a firm in New York might call a rainy, 90-degree day miserable, locals don’t seem upset by it,” notes the Enterprise. “The list-makers are oblivious to that.” Beaumont’s beauty is in the eye of the beholder.