“The governor’s got a busy schedule today, so he’ll want to start on time,” I naively said to the reporter next to me.

Greg Abbott was campaigning for members of the Texas House of Representatives who have primary opponents. He started the morning in North Richland Hills, north of Fort Worth, at 8:30. He was due in Huntsville, 200 miles away, by 12:15. Then he was campaigning for Republicans with primary challengers in Pearland, south of Houston, at 3:30.

Except 8:30 came and went, and we hadn’t seen the governor. The restaurant was accommodating. It might have seemed it was packed with no room to move, but somehow the staff still filtered through offering everyone free breakfast tacos.

When the governor arrived, though, someone behind the bar dropped a tray of glasses.

Early voting had started a couple days earlier and just 1.5% had already voted [Today, that number has skyrocketed to 7%]. Regardless of party or intra-party preference, he explained there’s nothing stopping you from voting.

One of the guys nestled among hundreds of others in the crowd found the speech so exciting, he almost abandoned his game of Candy Crush.

With election turnout so low, my concern is we don’t learn from the past. Consider this great empire long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away…

I started scrolling through notes in my phone while we waited at the restaurant. They go back more than a decade, and I found one where I appear to have jotted down thoughts during a roundtable with associates about the 2012 election.

We had apparently pieced together what we thought might happen if the Empire from Star Wars had instead remained a republic. Googling now, I see the internet has already broken down the leadership structure of the Empire… which seems weird when I see someone else doing it.

But in an alternate reality to this science fiction, if President Palpatine was in charge, the galaxy would still have gone into decay. It just would have taken longer.

He’d sign a budget with a bunch of pork, like equipment the Stormtroopers don’t actually need, because the plant that makes their helmets is in the district of the representative who chairs the Galactic Armed Services Committee.

Then the hyperspace engine plant would be built at an expanded McDonnell Douglas facility because it’s on Hoth, which is a battleground planet. At this point, an associate apparently commented that would cost votes on Kashyyyk because they’d lose jobs, so Palpatine’s staff might have to schedule a rally there before the election to shore up the vote.

But even as an empire, their infrastructure was clearly in decline. They built a gawdy, elaborate Death Star as a show of their military might, but for crying out loud, the contractor [who just happens to be married to Palpatine’s niece] left an exhaust port wide open.

If Star Wars had been told from the perspective of a scrappy, young TIE Fighter mechanic, he might have tried warning his superior officers about these insurgents trying to disrupt the peace in a volatile part of the galaxy.

“You just have to put a doggone mesh screen over the port,” he’d tell his supervisor, a Jawa. “I heard a group of terrorists may be plotting an attack on our avarice with some sort of centennial… or even a millennium falcon.”

If we’re going to keep making Star Wars films, this election season would be a great time to release a movie after the Resistance victory showing the constant in-fighting at Galactic Senate committee meetings.

“Oh, here we go again. Skywalker wants an X-Wing landing station on Naboo,” an Ewok would say. “They say it’s for defense of the Republic, but Big Lightsaber just happens to want to use the port to more easily mine crystals. Pay attention, people!”