Slate Fare

A New Name for That Florida Mess

And no recounts allowed!

Sacrificing herself on the altar of democracy, Fray Editor Moira Redmond manually counted more than 3,000 entries in our Name That Florida Thing contest. (She even read many of them.) Thanks to her exhaustive efforts, we have selected a winner. Scroll down to the bottom of this page to see the results. 

Here at Slate we try to avoid using headlines like “More on That Presidential Election Recount Semi-Crisis.” So we’ve been casting about for a nickname for … well, for whatever’s going on in Florida. The Florida Flip-Flop? Sunshine State Shenanigans? So far, the best we can offer is “GatorWait,” courtesy of senior writer William Saletan. It’s short and punchy, and has a nice play on words that takes a second to sink in.

But maybe our readers can do better. (After all, back in 1998 we were undeniably proud of our name for the Clinton-Lewinsky flap. Remember “Flytrap”? I didn’t think so.) Here’s your chance to put your stamp on American electoral politics, get your name in print, and save us a lot of headline-writing grief. Post your response in “The Fray,” with “Election Contest” or some such in the subject line, and later this week we’ll honor the best ones. By “honor,” of course, I mean “steal ruthlessly for our own use.” But we’ll also post them on this page.