The Texas Capitol building. Montinique Monroe/Getty Half an hour before deciding to deliver all of Texas’s 38 electoral college votes to Donald Trump and Mike Pence, the Texas electors faced a simpler vote. Who would chair their meeting? There were several contenders. Matthew Stringer, a right-wing activist and correspondent for the media wing of Empower Texans, was nominated as chairman and promptly seconded. Ken Mercer, a former member of the State Board of Education, then nominated Richard Tex Hall, a cowboy-hat-wearing, tobacco-dipping insurance agent from Bulverde, north of San Antonio. Finally, Randy Orr, who had lost a bid for a Texas Senate seat in 2018, put himself forward, apparently ignoring the advice of the Reverend Gregory S. Davidson, whose invocation before the meeting had asked God to “deliver [the electors] from all considerations of self-interest.” Neither Hall nor Orr could find a second, and thus were eliminated from contention. As voting on Stringer ensued, Hall and Mercer kept their hands down. But when the presiding chair of the meeting, Secretary of State Ruth Hughs, clarified that Stringer was the only eligible candidate, Mercer’s and Hall’s hands crept up. It was a swift lesson in democracy: the importance of accepting the results of a process that doesn’t go your way.