It’s a recurring nightmare.
You’re excited to finally get to the front of a meandering line. The minutes tick away as you patiently shuffle forward, reciting names in your head on who best suits your political interests.
You finally get to the front, but the clock strikes eight. You hear Century Tower clanging away in the distance as the friendly old volunteers snatch the ballot and Sharpie out of your hand.
“No vote for you!” they shriek in a nearly unintelligible tone. Your chance to participate in the greatest tradition of this country is stripped from you. You try to recite the names in your head once again, but you can’t remember them. All that’s rattling around in your dome at the moment is a slough of…
DARTS AND LAURELS
Voting season is right around the corner. Some may not like the language linking a sacred democratic act with sports, but here we are in the age of horse-race-style polling and 15-second sound bites.
If you’re a student living on UF’s campus and have been worrying about finding a ride to your polling station for the November general elections, then you got some much-needed good news Wednesday. A federal judge found the decision of Gov. Rick Scott to bar on-campus early voting sites unconstitutional (You can read all about this on Page 1) based on a lawsuit brought against state officials by a UF alumnus.
This means roughly 52,000 UF students could have much easier access to a polling location to cast their ballots. For this, we have to give out one of the most well-earned laurels to both U.S. District Judge Mark Walker as well as plaintiff Megan Newsome.
Some political maneuvering is straining against the tenets democracy. Case in point: A group of 11 lawmakers — led by Congressmen Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows — filed articles of impeachment against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein for issues they say pertain to “accountability and transparency.”
The House and Senate can’t be forced to vote on this. The 11 members of Congress likely know the resolution probably wouldn’t get the votes necessary even if that were so. It’s straight up political posturing over an investigation they disagree with.
In the grand scheme of things, these darts for Congressmen Jordan and Meadows will realistically accomplish what their Hail Mary does: pander to a very narrow audience with no real hope of actionable consequences.
Finally, we move away from elections in general to the results of them, specifically, how journalists deal with the fallout of political firings. Even more specifically, we have to give huge props to our cousins across the pond at the BBC for how “Newsnight” host Emily Maitlis handled her Monday interview with former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer.
Maitlis asked pointed questions of Spicer. Regarding the “Access Hollywood” tapes on which President Donald Trump bragged about sexual assault, Maitlis asked, “Did that tell you anything about your man that you didn’t previously know?”
Spicer responded by saying, “I think we’ve all said things in private, which that was, that were inappropriate.” Maitlis was having none of that. She followed up with, “Have you said things like that?”
It gives us a huge warm-fuzzy to give our last laurel to Emily Maitlis for proving to American mainstream journalists that tough questions like these can be asked without inviting the man onto the set of the Oscars.
