Comment on Faceoff: Tribune columnists debate how to best close the divide

Once upon a time there was a person with the unnoticeable name of Mary Harris, born in County Cork, Ireland, in 1837, who lived a private life of suffering and failure. Her parents, fleeing Ireland’s Great Hunger, brought her as a teenager to Canada, where she briefly attended a Toronto teachers’ school, before she went to Monroe, Michigan, where she briefly taught school in a convent.

On Monday, the US Department of Justice sent a letter to Alaska’s director of elections, outlining the state’s litany of violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act that impacted disabled voters. Under the ADA, disabled voters should have the same opportunity and access to vote as non-disabled people. The DOJ says in Alaska that was not happening. Here are just some of the issues found by the DOJ: Not all early voting and Election Day sites had accessible voting machines, and some machines did not work.

Last week, Senate Republicans introduced a bill that would designate federal funds for “Restorative Reproductive Medicine,” a loose group of therapies meant to help treat infertility without the use of in vitro fertilization or artificial insemination. The seven lawmakers who introduced the Reproductive Empowerment and Support through Optimal Restoration (RESTORE) Act, say it isn’t meant as an attack on IVF, which recently has come under fire by conservatives.

Alejandro Mayorkas, however, tried to extricate himself from blame and referred to the victim, Rachel Morin, as an "individual."

The plot thickens.

If I were convinced that the event would be run fairly, I’d be anxious to hear what the candidates have to say.