Spitzer Was Too Busy with Current TV to Vote in the 2012 Election
Eliot Spitzer has had "five years to reflect" since his 2008 resignation, but apparently not enough time to cast a vote in November's election, a New York Post report claims.
.Eliot Spitzer has had "five years to reflect" since his 2008 resignation, but apparently not enough time to cast a vote in November's election, a New York Post report claims. The former governor, who penned a Slate column headlined "Why I Am Voting for Barack Obama" just four days prior to the election, apparently was too busy appearing on Current TV's roundtable election coverage:
A spokeswoman said Spitzer couldn’t make it to the polls because he had to high-tail it to San Francisco to serve as a paid co-anchor of Current TV’s round-table election coverage.
At his side was former Vice President Al Gore.
“That’s why he didn’t vote. There was not time for him to vote or get an absentee ballot,” said the spokeswoman, Lisa Linden.
Which reminds us of a fantastic recent innovation in U.S. voting law: absentee voting, which dates back to the election of 1864, when tens of thousands of soldiers were understandably too occupied with the Civil War to make it to the polls. Spitzer, who proclaimed on November 2 that "it's time to choose," made no such arrangements, despite New York's option of showing up at the local board up to a day before the election to fill out an absentee ballot. He also neglected to vote in 2003 and 2007—but made it to the polls on the years when his name was on the ballot.
The embarrassment could cast a minor pale on Spitzer's mad dash to collect 3,750 signatures by today to get his name on the ballot for comptroller. (Certainly it's cheery news for Spitzer's enemies, who like to point to his prostitution scandal as evidence that the former governor is a hypocrite who doesn't think the rules apply to him.) It may also remind high-profile celebrities—including Lena Denham—to consider their own voting records before making public pleas to the electorate.