Venezuela’s Warning to Californians: Never Take Elections for Granted

While Congress argues over whether the Trump administration “overreached” by capturing Venezuela’s dictator Nicolás Maduro, it’s important to remember Venezuela was “not a free and open society” for the past two decades.

Daily Signal California Commentator Elaine Culotti sits down on today’s episode to break apart these claims, reminding us how blessed we are as Americans to have the freedom to vote for the change we want to see.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Contributor Elaine Culotti. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of her videos.

Hi, I’m Elaine Culotti for The Daily Signal, otherwise known as “Lipstick Farmer.”

I felt compelled to do a podcast today about waking up to the regime change going on in Venezuela.

We’ve had a lot of arguing in the House [of Representatives] about it. And I want to compare it to something, and I want to make a point that’s valid to me.

There is celebration in the streets, and there are a lot of people who think it’s overreaching by the Trump administration. So, it’s going to go back and forth for a long time, and it will be a while before it all shakes out. But what is for sure is that the guy who ran Venezuela ran Venezuela for 26 years.

And, 26 years is not a free and open society. It’s not a democratic society.

Twenty-six years is a dictatorship—or whatever you want to call it. And, here in California, which is my home and where I prioritize my time and my thoughts and my goodwill, we have elections coming up.

And I thought it would be a good idea and an appropriate time to do a podcast on what it means to have an election that you believe in. And trustworthy elections. Because they’re the difference—in my opinion—of a free society and a dictatorship.

And we’ve called people names over the years. We’ve used the name “dictator.”

And what a dictator is very different than what we’ve ever had in America.

In America, we’ve never had a dictator. We’ve never been oppressed. We’ve never not had elections—[we] just skipped them. I think once during a World War there was one president that stayed in an extra term.

Generally speaking, we have elections every single year in some state or some municipality.

We rotate mayors. We allow city council people to run. We have people that run for transportation; for school superintendent. We have people who run for insurance commissioner, lieutenant governors and governors, secretaries of state, attorneys, attorney generals.

We have so many different positions that get to run to run the state, and that means to us Americans—and people here in California—is we have choices. We have choices that we can make.

Having homes in the Palisades [in California] and spending a lot of time on air talking to people about the Palisades fires, I have read a lot of comments. And a lot of times, comments will say, “That’s what you get, that’s what you voted for.”

Now, as a person coming from the Palisades, that’s pretty upsetting to me.

But there is some truth and honesty to it; in that if we don’t vote differently, we can’t change things.

And the fact that we have the power to vote is such a miracle. It’s such a freedom. It’s such an honor to have the power to choose the people that you want to run your country, your state, your town, your school, your insurance—everything! Even your police department.

You can vote for the people that you want to run, and we should be celebrating that. And we should be celebrating it every day, and we should be taking advantage of it. We should take advantage of it.

We should demand better politicians, better managers, better servants of the state because that’s what it is. It is a service job for people who live in America.

We pay a fee for people to work in service in our country. They work for us. And we should pick who those employees of the state are far more carefully than we do.

What we do, or what we tend to do, is we tend to pick either party line—it’s either blue or it’s red—or even worse, we just dumb luck, think we recognize the name. We stand at the voting booth unprepared and haven’t read [anything]. We have one responsibility as citizens in voting, and that is to know who you’re voting for. That’s the only responsibility: to vote for somebody who can bring meaningful change; who’s going to do the right thing by the state, who’s going do the right thing by your town. Who’s going to work and do all of the things that they ran on.

They make promises. They go to podiums. They talk to people. They say they’re going to make change, and then they get into office and they don’t do it.

We have this magnificent thing called AI. [By using] AI, you can check someone’s voting record. You can go and put in their name and ask how they voted and it’ll tell you all about them. You can pick your candidates before you show up.

And if what happened in Venezuela has taught me anything—anything at all—it has taught me how lucky we are that we have an open voting system in America where we can choose who runs our country and how they run it.

And the only thing we have to do is vote. And on that note, we have elections coming up in California in 2026. We’ve just rung in the New Year, and we have the opportunity to choose a new governor, a new lieutenant governor, a new insurance commissioner, a new superintendent, a new secretary of state, a new controller, a new A.G.

We have new people in Sacramento coming in, and we can choose the right people, and we can run California and turn California around with people that we elect. That we want. Not pay[ing] attention to the party line stuff. Forget the party line stuff. Don’t go with name recognition because you didn’t do your homework.

Tighten your belt and do your homework. Look up who’s running and really educate yourself. Read the policy. Read what the job is. Read what the job does. How’s it going affect you? And make decisions based on what you want to see happen in your town, in your home, at your schools, with your police, with your fire.

Let’s not do this again. Let’s not make the same mistake twice. Let’s take this opportunity to turn California around this year, and let’s spend a lot of time learning. With that, I’m going to sign off from The Daily Signal. The party is over.

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