Today is Super Tuesday, when voters in Texas, 13 other states, and one territory go to the polls to choose their party’s nominees in races ranging from president to constable.

It also means your mailboxes—and my apartment complex’s parking lot—will soon be less cluttered by colorful, joyful, and strange mailers from campaigns and political action committees.

By Wednesday, the onslaught of campaign ads for former Mayor Michael Bloomberg broadcast on everything from television to Shopkick should disappear, at least for a while. Don’t worry, Democrats: you’ll see another round come from two runoffs, one for the U.S. Senate and perhaps for state House District 108, where three Democrats are vying to defeat state Rep. Morgan Meyer, R-Highland Park, in the fall.

If the state’s numerous barriers to voting haven’t stopped you from voting, get in line by 7 p.m. and bring one of the approved permitted forms of identification. This year, you’ll be voting electronically but will receive a printed sheet with a barcode and your selections. You’ll submit that paper, creating a trail. On Twitter, there are reports of equipment problems from Mansfield to East Dallas. We’re calling election judges to figure out what’s going on.

According to numbers guru Derek Ryan, 1,085,065 Texan Republicans already voted compared to Democrats’ 1,000,231. Statewide more people voted Republican in 219 counties compared to Democrats’ 35. Collin and Denton are among the 219 while Dallas and Tarrant counties are among the 35.

Primary numbers don’t translate into general election voters, however, much like yard signs don’t vote. But the turnout shows both sides are energized going into the fall.

Students in Texas learning about the Harlem Renaissance will read in their high school history textbooks that there were some critics who disparaged the output of the cultural movement. High school students in California will read in their history textbooks that there has been legislation passed over the years that restricts the right to bear arms laid out the second amendment to the Constitution, but that detail is omitted in the Texas version of the exact same textbook.

These are two of the discrepancies between high school textbooks that the New York Times found in an analysis of the books used in Texas and California schools. Their report shows how the highly political process that goes into approving textbooks for American schools can alter the way history is conveyed and interpreted. This isn’t news to anyone who has seen the great documentary The Revisionaries, which takes viewers behind the scenes in the ongoing ideological battles waged over how Texas textbooks are written. Still, the report details how children growing up in different parts of the country will emerge from high school with subtle, if significant differences in how they understand this country.

Here’s how it happens:

There is a funny, sort-of-sad line in this CityLab piece about boosting participation in local elections by two of the higher ups at the National League of Cities: “…in what is supposedly one of the most democratic countries, we can’t get more than half of our population to vote regularly.”

Dallas would kill for those numbers. Today is Election Day, on which you all will have the chance to vote on a bevy of state constitutional amendments. Some will vote on a replacement for former state Rep. Eric Johnson in District 100, the House seat he vacated when he won mayor. There are some local races in Mesquite. But all signs point to this being a disastrous turnout, despite the fact that you can now vote at any county polling location—not just the ones in your district.

In the May election, perhaps the most important mayoral race in recent Dallas history, about 11 percent of registered voters went to the polls. Four years before that, 7.4 percent of registered voters reelected Mayor Mike Rawlings. That was good enough to be the worst turnout in the nation’s 50 largest cities. In the last non-mayoral election, when there was a multi-billion dollar bond package up for a vote as well as some constitutional amendments and the future of the Dallas County Schools busing system, just 6.5 percent of voters cared to express themselves on a ballot.

The CityLab article notes that “our voter registration process is complicated and punitive,” particularly so in Texas. The writers—Brooks Rainwater, a senior executive at the League, and Olivia Snarski, a local democracy program leader—highlight some creative ways to motivate voter turnout: train social services providers on voter registration assistance, give landlords incentives to hand over registration forms, embrace public schools as a convener for such efforts. (Some of those things are already happening here.) Same-day registration, which Rainwater and Snarski say jump turnout by 10 percent in states that offer it, probably won’t fly politically in Texas.

The story is interesting, but it places a lot of responsibility on the backs of mayors. And in Dallas, Mayor Eric Johnson simply isn’t able to enact policies like tax credits to small businesses that give their employees the day off to go vote. (We do have two full weeks of early voting, something not every other state offers.) The weak mayor system puts that power in the hands of the city manager and City Council. That’s not to say we can’t think creatively about this:

Ah, the lowly bus. Whenever I write about buses—and there is good reason to, given that Dallas is about to give its entire bus network a rehaul—someone in the comments sounds-off with some version of this critique: people don’t ride buses because buses suck.

It’s a difficult point to argue against. If you have ever ridden a bus, and especially if your experience of bus travel is limited to Dallas, then you know how bouncing around on a bus through this city’s streets can be an excruciating, sometimes nauseating experience. They’re often too hot or too cold; they can feel like a boat heaving on rough seas; their routes wind round and round; they take forever to reach their destination; there are so many stops it can sometimes feel that you could walk faster than a bus that has to scoop up passengers at every street corner and stop at every stoplight. I get it. Buses are often not fun.

I have ridden some nice buses. Chicago has a good bus system, and it ties into the “L” trains seamlessly. London’s buses are incredibly efficient and wonderful complement to the tube, once you get a handle on the routes. Rome’s buses are rough, but they are often all you have to rely on, so you make them work, which is easier in a city that is so dense. My aunt rode the same bus route from Queens, NY to Midtown nearly every day for decades, so much so that the bus became for her a kind of “third place,” and her stories of bickering and kvetching with her fellow bus regulars became a common topic of conversation at family gatherings. This is all to say that, despite their reputation, buses can work.

But why, then, do people harbor such deep–almost irrational–hatred for the bus?

Buried near the 40-minute mark of the surreptitious recording of House Speaker Dennis Bonnen and the far-right Empower Texans head Michael Q. Sullivan was a brief exchange that spelled out the antipathy many in the state Legislature feel toward Texas’ cities:

Dennis Bonnen: In this office, in the conference room at that end, any mayor or county judge who’s dumbass enough to come meet with me, I told them with great clarity, my goal is for this to be the worst session in the history of the legislature for cities and counties.

Dustin Burrows: I hope the next session is even worse.

Dennis Bonnen: And I’m all for that.

The quote made it around certain Twitter circles yesterday morning. The plain language explained what plenty of bills have done in recent legislative sessions: kneecap urban areas from passing policy the Lege doesn’t want. Last year came reform bills that capped the rate at which cities can raise property taxes. The Lege banned red light cameras. It blocked cities from charging private telecommunication companies for using public right of way, particularly concerning when you think of all the impending 5G infrastructure.

Houston estimates that not charging telecom companies for right of way will cost it $27 million per year. Taken altogether, the bills passed by the Lege will create a $44 million annual shortfall for the city of Dallas by 2023, according to a budget forecast. Even Moody’s found the property tax reform law would generate “minimal” homeowner savings but would “hurt local governments substantially.” That sounds like a plan to screw local governments more than provide relief to taxpayers.

Burrows, the Lubbock state representative who was also heard spouting off on the tape, later added, “We hate cities and counties.” He told Sullivan he had pitched the governor on taking away what cities can use from sales tax to pay for economic development, public transit, or other services.

These strategies aren’t new.

Dallas Area Rapid Transit proved it is finally serious about fixing its bus system. On Wednesday, the DART board voted to sign a contract with public transit consultant Jarrett Walker, who will help the public transit agency draw up a new plan for bus service in the region.

Walker is a big name in the world of transit planning—and bus system planning in particular. He and his firm have worked with cities all over the world, and he has proven successful helping low density cities rethink how to organize their public transit systems and improve bus reliability and ridership. Perhaps most notably, in Seattle, Walker helped what CityLab deemed a “transit-backward town” become a national model in implementing smart, efficient bus service. Walker was also deeply involved in Houston’s bus redo. He writes about his ideas about public transit at HumanTransit.org.

That DART is bringing Walker on board is significant not simply because he is a smart transit wonk. Walker is known for being able to lead civic leaders and transit officials through the complicated political calculations that can inhibit transit reform. Earlier this week, I wrote about Steven Higashide’s new book Better Buses, Better Transit, in which the author argues successful conversations around transit need “to include process and politics, not just technology and policy.” That phrase pretty much sums up Walker’s approach.

“If the buses are terrible in your city, you may think that buses are terrible in general,” Walker wrote in a 2018 Atlantic piece. “In truth, a city’s bus service is as good as its leaders and voters want it to be. Where voters have funded better bus services and cities have worked to give them priority, as in Seattle, ridership has soared.”