(Q).
WASHINGTON In 2004, Desmond Meade, while serving a 15-year prison sentence for a drug offense in Florida, got a break. An appeals court returned his conviction to the original trial bench, allowing him to plead guilty to a lesser charge and get out of prison in three years, most of which he had already served. But his freedom came with a price, something that didn't quite register with him at the time: as part of his plea agreement with prosecutors, Meade agreed to give up his civil rights: the right to vote, to serve on a jury and to run for office. "At the time, when I first accepted the plea deal, I didn't understand the consequences," Meade says. Fourteen years and a pair of college and law degrees later, Meade, now 50, still can't vote; his application to regain his civil rights was rejected in 2011. The reason: a new Florida law that requires felons like him to wait for seven years before they could apply for rights restoration. Home to nearly a quarter of the nation's disenfranchised felons, Florida has become a battleground in a national debate over felony disenfranchisement laws. With lawmakers deeply divided over the issue, Meade says he wants the state's voters to change the system when they head to the polls on Nov. 6. He's promoting a ballot initiative that would amend the state's constitution, restoring the voting rights of all felons in Florida (except those convicted of murder and sexual assault) after they've completed the terms of their sentence. The measure enjoys broad voter support. A Quinnipiac University poll conducted in February showed that 67 percent of Floridians were in favor of restoring the voting rights of felons other than those convicted of murder and sexual assault. Another poll showed support at 71 percent. "We're going to change the system," Meade says confidently. "What we're doing is taking the power out of the hands of politicians and we're allowing the citizens of the state of Florida to decide whether or not folks should have a second chance, to be able to vote." How long will it take to vote on the ballot: Pick the correct answer from the following options: - about 15 minutes - under a month. - over three days - not enough information
(A).
about 15 minutes

(Q).
Sheila split open and the air was filled with gumballs. Yellow gumballs. This was awful for Stan, just awful. He had loved Sheila for a long time, fought for her heart, believed in their love until finally she had come around. They were about to kiss for the first time and then this: yellow gumballs. Stan went to a group to try to accept that Sheila was gone. It was a group for people whose unrequited love had ended in some kind of surrealist moment. There is a group for everything in California. After several months of hard work on himself with the group, Stan was ready to open a shop and sell the thousands of yellow gumballs. He did this because he believed in capitalism, he loved capitalism. He loved the dynamic surge and crash of Amazon's stock price, he loved the great concrete malls spreading across America like blood staining through a handkerchief, he loved how everything could be tracked and mirrored in numbers. When he closed the store each night he would count the gumballs sold, and he would determine his gross revenue, his operating expenses, his operating margin; he would adjust his balance sheet and learn his debt to equity ratio; and after this exercise each night, Stan felt he understood himself and was at peace, and he could go home to his apartment and drink tea and sleep, without shooting himself or thinking about Sheila. On the night before the IPO of gumballs.com, Sheila came to Stan in a dream. She was standing in a kiddie pool; Stan and his brothers and sisters were running around splashing and screaming; she had managed to insert herself into a Super-8 home movie of Stan's family, shot in the late 70's. She looked terribly sad. "Sheila, where are you?" Stan said. "Why did you leave me, why did you become gumballs?" "The Ant King has me," Sheila said. "You must rescue me." What did Stan sell in his new shop? Pick the correct answer from the following options: - yellow gum - gumballs - not enough information - Yellow hankercheifs
(A).
gumballs

(Q).
Rain, the young man is thinking. Of course it would be raining. Not a heavy, cleansing rain that leaves the streets steaming and the neatly sculptured yards lush and fragrant. This is a gray drizzling rain. A rain that makes him think of places like England and Scotland as they appear in those disturbing late night films on cable, the ones in black and white that weren't particularly memorable when they were made and are even less so now. Still, it rains and the air is cool. All he has to shelter him is a think nylon jacket. The jacket is soaked. It feels both chilly and coarse against his skin. His hair hangs in flat and sodden wings, falling into his eyes. It's long in the back, almost to his shoulders, and he thinks that the cars that pass him on the street, the occupants of those cars, might look at him and see only that he is wet and not that he is dirty as well. Can they tell that his hair has been unwashed for days? That his clothes are the same ones he's worn for more than a week? It doesn't matter. He's invisible to them as soon as they pass, taking any assumptions they might make with them. They might just mistake him for one of those hoity-toity college kids, one of those clean limbed and beaming have's who has happened to find himself caught out without his umbrella. He makes a desultory attempt to straighten his shoulders, to lift his eyes from the buckled sidewalk. To look like he might have a purpose or a destination. It doesn't help. He has become the day. He has internalized the environment. He did that years ago, in fact. That's all I can do. Not his words, of course, but he understands them. He is intimately acquainted with his limitations. The young man after the passage most likely: Pick the correct answer from the following options: - Finds a bridge to sit under - Returns to his large home - Goes to class at the college - not enough information
(A).
Finds a bridge to sit under