What a joke, this outrage over Florida's failure to extend the voter registration deadline.
Let's be honest here. Unless Florida's eligible, still-unregistered voters have been in a coma or chained up in an attic for the last three months, Hurricane Matthew is no excuse. These folks had how long to get up off their kiester and register? They plain aren't engaged in the election process.
I mean no offense to unregistered voters. Two of our seven kids suffer from the same malady. I don't think they could tell a ballot from a banana, and though I try hard to persuade them to care, I would (figuratively) fight to the death anyone coercing a vote out of them that they haven't thought out.
To make myself perfectly clear: I oppose mandatory voting -- and this is what's happening in this country. It's happening right now. Today. We're creeping up to it year by year, as the states nuance their voting laws, nudged by political parties who cry foul when they can't find a new way to railroad the folks who don't want to participate.
Casting a vote is speech. It is showing support or opposition to a candidate or proposal. Making voting mandatory means voting is no longer a right. It's an obligation. It's forced speech. If we were forced to attend a church, but had a choice of several churches, we would still (most of us, anyway) recognize that this is a violation of our freedom to decline to practice religion at all. Not voting isn't just an expression of apathy, it's also a form of protest.
We're going into the second week of October, for Lord's sake. That's a month before the general election. Do you mean to tell me a person hasn't had enough time to know if he/she wants to get off the couch and go register?
Gov. Rick Scott was all kinds of bashed Thursday for failing to extend the voter registration deadline past Tuesday because of Hurricane Matthew. "Everybody has had a lot of time to register," Scott said. And so they have. His was an understated fact. I wouldn't have been so polite.
By "everybody," I'm sure the governor meant not only the unregistered, but the Democratic-leaning groups all primed to administer smelling salts to the severally disinterested.
Among the groups leaning on Scott was the League of Women Voters of Florida. LWVF President Pamela S. Goodman sent a letter to the governor, the Florida Cabinet, the secretary of state, and members of the Florida Legislature urging the governor to reverse his position. As you might expect from the League, it was a passive-aggressive exercise in painting the governor as a scoundrel who would disenfranchise voters and thwart democracy. The letter ends, "The country's eyes are on Florida and on you to be a just leader in the democratic process." This , a thinly veiled scolding from the "nonpartisan" LWVF.
Mind you, the last-minute Florida registration drive worked a charm for Barack Obama in 2012. In the last five days the Obama campaign team signed up about 50,000 people.
In making his own plea to Scott, Robby Mook, Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, said, “Our hope would be that a little bit more time will be given for people who were expecting to be able to get registered before the election.”
Uh, hold up there, Robby. This isn't for people who were "expecting to be able to get registered before the election." Be honest. There aren't enough of those left to fit in a broom closet. This is all about you winning crucial Florida. This is for you and the Democrats and especially Hillary -- and also because you're paying a ton for boots on the ground to go get these unregistereds' signature on a piece of paper.
University of Florida professor Daniel A. Smith, who studies Florida voting trends, said Thursday he thinks Scott's refusal to accommodate the Democrats' request is because in the late going the Dems have pulled ahead in registering new voters. "I don't expect him to extend the voter-registration period because the tail-end of the voter-registration drives tend to pick up those who are less politically engaged, who are younger and minority voters and that doesn't bode well for the Republican Party."
I don't know about younger and minority voters. But I'm absolutely convinced they're pretty much all the "less politically engaged."
This idea of make-up time is a ridiculous political sham, Governor. Maybe no one else will tell you this, but I'm glad you knocked it dead in its tracks.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
