If you are satisfied with the way Panola County is being managed by our elected officials, please don’t vote.

If you are satisfied with your county budget being approved by our board of supervisors with a half million dollar deficit, please don’t vote.

I don’t know any business that budgets that kind of loss and remains in business—but if you’re satisfied with your tax dollars being managed that way, then please don’t vote.

If you are satisfied with paying yearly notes of $331,000 for a jail that has the capacity to hold 243 inmates and actually has 60 to 70 on a average daily basis, (actually approximately 118 but 43 are trustees living in the work center outside the main jail building), then please don’t vote.

If you feel safe knowing five drug related murders were committed the first three months of 2011 in Panola County and if you are satisfied with a near riot in downtown Batesville that nearly overwhelmed law enforcement, then please don’t vote.

If you’re satisfied with county officials manipulating the voting process to gain re-election with some even denouncing citizenship and abusing county vehicles, then don’t vote.

If you are satisfied with the way our election commissioners are handling continued complaints of voting irregularities in the same precincts, then please don’t vote.

Since most of our citizens seem to be satisfied with the way things are headed and don’t bother to vote, my advice is to take it or leave it and be prepared to defend your family and property because it won’t improve as long as our citizens don’t vote.

But if you care about the future of your children and grandchildren, if you want to make changes to the way decisions are made concerning the future, then run as fast as you can to the circuit clerk’s office and register to vote by October 8.

If you are already registered, then for your family’s sake, vote November 8. Four years from now will be too late.

One thing for sure, we will get the government we deserve.
/s/ Gary Ramsey