BY RITA COOK / Freelance Writer
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ELLIS COUNTY – Ellis County’s current U.S. Congressional Representative Jake Ellzey, who is up for reelection in the March primary recently voted along with other House Republicans to keep Biden’s kill switch mandate, which is to be placed on cars beginning this year.
This is not a feature that makes those inside the vehicle safer if there is an accident – instead means the possibility of denying the owner of the vehicle the ability to drive.
Kentucky’s Thomas Massie offered an amendment in January asking lawmakers to block funding for the kill switch implementation.
House Republicans and Democrats who originally voted against the mandate were later convinced the vehicle kill switch technology was a good idea.
The argument is that the technology is not about government and law enforcement to shut down vehicles at will, however the mandate emphasizes that drivers be censored while driving.
One Ellis County voter said last week, “What if there is a medical emergency and my car stops because it does not like the way I am driving – it takes away my freedom?”
Those who are for taking yet another freedom away refer to drunk driving as one reason the kill switch is a good idea.
It also makes every driver on the road who is not doing anything illegally be forced to accept unnecessary government overreach.
Approximately 83% of the Texas population have a driver’s license or state-issued ID, and there are more than 23 million vehicles registered in the state.
To that end, in Texas, drunk driving enforcement results in, for example 257.7 arrests per 100,000 licensed drivers in 2018. That leaves a very high percentage of drivers who do not drink and drive, yet the mandate would still approve taking away freedom from all Texas drivers due to the low percentage of drivers unable to control themselves.
Clyde Wayne Crews of the nonprofit think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute said in a statement: “The vehicle ‘kill-switch’ is precisely the kind of overreach that will empower regulatory agencies to manage behavior without votes by elected representatives in Congress or real accountability.”
Some Ellis County voters were also dissatisfied with Ellzey’s recent vote on a rider attached to the $224 billion Fiscal Year 2026 Labor, HHS, Education and Related Agencies funding bill that would have banned federal funding of gender-affirming care at any age, banned colleges and universities from allowing trans people participate in sports or other activities, and banned K-12 schools from taking measures to support trans kids like letting them use the restroom of their gender.
