It’s now pretty much an historical fact that the road to President Barack Obama’s re-election ended up running a lot smoother than the hyped-up punditocracy had predicted in advance of Election Day. That is, at least from the perspective of the candidate and his campaign functionaries. Closer to ground-level, Election Day was anything but smooth for large swathes of the electorate, who in many cases encountered long lines, late nights, the usual widespread confusion, or some combination of all three.
That night, in his acceptance speech, Obama acknowledged this in a line that had the feel of an ad lib: “I want to thank every American who participated in this election. Whether you voted for the very first time or waited in line for a very long time — by the way, we have to fix that.” The pointed acknowledgement of the rigors many voters faced that night birthed new hopes in the hearts of voter reform, that the president would take on the matter, and bring long-needed correctives to the overall voter experience. And this week, ahead of Obama’s State Of The Union address, the voter reform set kept those hopes aloft as the rumors flew that their concerns were going to get a mention.
There certainly was a goodly dose of pageantry surrounding the issue when Obama came to Capitol Hill to address both houses of Congress and the nation at large. One of the evening’s honored guests was Desiline Victor, a 102-year-old Florida woman whose struggles to vote in Miami were near legendary. That night, Obama honored her commitment to voting thusly:
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