In New Jersey, they stay in the dark.

See, they elected this lieutenant governor, who served as the acting governor, and well, she died.

Here's what the Associated Press reported:

TRENTON, New Jersey -- Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver, who rose to become one of New Jersey's most prominent Black leaders and passionately advocated for revitalizing cities and against gun violence, died Tuesday after a sudden illness. She was 71.

No cause of death was given, according to a statement from her family issued by Gov. Phil Murphy 's office. Oliver was serving as acting governor while Murphy and his family are on vacation in Italy. His office said she had been hospitalized on Monday.

Seems the cause of death was unimportant, and the media is remarkably incurious about getting answers. So far, nobody's been told what she died of, let alone that when she was running for office, and for that matter, when she was serving as acting governor, she may have had a potentially fatal medical condition, which could easily have been the case.

Sure, sometimes people drop dead without warning of heart attacks or strokes or other things. But since ABC News (we're parsing here) said it was an "undisclosed medical issue" it sounds as though it might have been something known and chronic.

If so, maybe the voters should have been told. 

But it's far from the only case going on with these kinds of undisclosed health problems of politicians, which not only can lead to incapacitation as we have seen with Joe Biden and Sens. John Fetterman and Dianne Feinstein, can actually lead to dying in office, too.

They don't disclose these things any more, and given that this is public office, maybe it should be the public's interest. Shouldn't voters have a right to know if a politician is in poor health in making their voting decisions? Shouldn't voters now know at least what she died of? With Oliver dead, it probably couldn't embarrass her.

But none of this matters to Democrats.

After all, what was important to them was that she was "a historic first." That raises another question, actually, of whether she was pushed into this office to be a "historic first," as the first black female lieutenant governor and acting governor, by Democrat party operatives, when she should have been focusing on her health.

And cripes, she was holding the top office as acting governor while New Jersey's governor, Phil Murphy, made a trip to Europe. Now they've got nobody running that state, or well, reportedly, it's Senate President Nicholas Scutari. Was Oliver really the acting governor, or was she desperately trying to stay alive?

We don't know, because most of the press is glossing over the issue of the public not being told why she was ill and what she died of, and instead hailing and hooting and touting that she was "a historic first," same as they must have done on the night she was elected, as if we're not supposed to notice that elephant in the room about whether her health really permitted her to serve.

Is this what it's come to now? Voters can just guess and guess again about whether the people they are expected to elect are fit and healthy enough to serve? 

Nobody knows, and based on what's being dished out from the press, we're just supposed to gloss that over that inconvenient question, and the broader question of whether political leaders should be compelled to release information about their health, or just carry on with nobody ever knowing if a political leader might just be better off tending to her health instead of playing "historic first" figurehead.

So much for transparency.

What a sad state of affairs this is that an acting governor can die on us in New Jersey and nobody's supposed to be the wiser.

Image: Debbie Galant, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY 2.0