Commentary

Our Maryland, RCV Maryland and FairVote recently co-sponsored an online straw poll of the candidates in the Maryland Democratic primary for governor. The straw poll was open to all Marylanders, with voting taking place from June 1 to 15. Ranked choice voting (RCV) was used to yield a majority — as opposed to plurality — winner and to allow voters to rank their favorite candidates without fear of playing a spoiler role. We are now prepared to publicly report the results and lessons learned from the straw poll.

I’m fascinated by mass hysterias. To me, their histories are both mysterious and incredibly revelatory about how human beings can lose themselves, dangerously so, in groupthink, a sort of psychotic contagion. There were relatively limited and brief hysterias, like the dancing plague of 1518, when hundreds of people in the European city of Strasbourg (then part of the Holy Roman Empire, but now part of France) joined in a seemingly inexplicable “dancing epidemic” that lasted for weeks, as people fell dead of strokes and heart attacks.

The world sure can seem like a mess lately. At times, it can start to feel as if an unavoidable ill fate is upon us all. A great place to ponder all of this is Maryland Doom Fest, which offers an outlet from the world’s madness by taking the doom and obliterating it with bombastic hard rock and shredding metal riffs from a variety of heralded national and local acts.

Our Maryland, RCV Maryland and FairVote recently co-sponsored an online straw poll of the candidates in the Maryland Democratic primary for governor. The straw poll was open to all Marylanders, with voting taking place from June 1 to 15. Ranked choice voting (RCV) was used to yield a majority — as opposed to plurality — winner and to allow voters to rank their favorite candidates without fear of playing a spoiler role. We are now prepared to publicly report the results and lessons learned from the straw poll. There was a total of 1,121 voters.

The shrill call earlier this month by Gov. Larry Hogan (R) for a criminal investigation into grading practices in Baltimore City schools is a new low in his political grandstanding on public education in general and city schools in particular. It is legitimate to call attention to laxity and confusion in the grading policies, as laid out in a report by Maryland’s Inspector General for Education. And heaven knows the Baltimore City school system has terrible problems — some of their own making and many caused by lack of national and state support. Still, the governor’s outburst is far out of proportion and not constructive.

She’s not exactly starving for affirmation. To the contrary, Malala Yousafzai is a global icon. Since 2012 when, as a 15-year-old Pakistani girl, she survived being shot in the head by a Taliban thug, she has met with heads of state, addressed the United Nations and won the Nobel Peace Prize. It says something, then, that this celebrated woman finds validation in a Marvel superhero. “Ms. Marvel,” to be exact, now streaming on Disney+.

Before the pandemic, around 1 in 10 older adults in the U.S. experienced elder mistreatment. In 2020, this number doubled to 1 in 5 – a nearly 84% increase. Mistreatment comes in many forms, including various types of abuse, neglect, exploitation and fraud. Adult Protective Services agencies exist in every U.S. state and territory to investigate adult mistreatment reports and work with clients to address their needs. APS staff members gather information from clients, alleged abusers and third parties such as family members, friends or neighbors to determine whether there is enough evidence to support a mistreatment claim.