Your vote counts – but only if you vote. So register now, if you haven’t already. History is replete with close elections and razor-thin margins, which led to world-changing events.

Take the 2000 U.S. presidential election. It all came down to Florida, and a mere 537 votes out of 5.9 million votes cast in that state, and the 105.4 million votes nationwide. Those 537 votes decided who was sitting in the White House the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

Or take the Minnesota senatorial election of 2008. Comedian Al Franken, in his first political bid, ran as a Democrat against Republican incumbent Norm Coleman. Franken beat him by just 312 votes – or 0.01 percent of the nearly 2.9 million votes cast in that election. Franken’s victory was crucial to the passage of the Affordable Care Act – Obamacare – in 2009. Had Coleman kept his seat, the ACA would have failed.

Closer to home, Lyndon Johnson won a Texas Senate seat in 1948 by just 87 votes (there remains some question about 200 or so of those ballots, however). He parlayed his power in the Senate into a vice presidency. He became president when John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, and later made a key decision on U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

The real point is voting is important. But you can’t vote if you don’t register, and the deadline to register is fast-approaching for anyone who wishes to vote in either the Republican or Democratic primary March 1.

There are several ways to register to vote. You can visit the Smith County Elections Office, in the Smith County Courthouse Annex, 200 E. Ferguson St., Suite 500. That office can be reached at 903-590-4777.

Another way to register is to go online to VoteTexas.com. There you’ll find an application to print out, sign and send in (it must be postmarked by Feb. 1 in order for you to vote March 1).

That website can also tell you if you are registered already.

The Voter ID law is still in effect in Texas. There are seven forms of approved ID. Three are issued by the state: DPS-issued driver’s license, DPS-issued ID card or handgun license.

You can use a passport, military ID or citizenship certificate. And if you don’t have any of those, you can get an Election Identification Certificate from the DPS.

Now is the time to ensure you have the ID you’ll need when you vote. Voters without IDs on Election Day may still vote, but they can only vote provisionally – meaning they’ll have six days in which to go to the county elections office and show their ID.

The March 1 election is really two separate elections – the Democratic primary and the Republican primary. You can vote in either, but you can’t vote in both.

And for future reference, when it comes time for the runoff, you have to be consistent. If you vote in one party’s primary, you can only vote in the same party’s primary.

Early voting will take place from Feb. 16 through Feb. 26.