Yes, this is our 100th post. I told Steve we were coming up on it, and asked him if maybe he wanted his first post to be our 100th, and he said “you’ve written 99 posts already?” Well, it’s been a while, so yeah, I’ve written that many. Anyway, I thought I needed something memorable or exciting, so I’ve really put off posting anything that has been sort of in the works because it didn’t seem worthy. And now I realize that if I keep waiting for something huge to come up, it will never get written. So, here is something kind of stupid I came across today that I thought I would share.
First, a bit of background. In addition to the various interior design classes I am taking this semester, I am taking an online business law course. It is required for the advanced certificate in interior design, and I thought it would be pretty easy for me since I already have a fair amount of education and experience in that area. Every other week, we have a discussion question that we are supposed to post a comment about in an online forum. Two weeks ago, the teacher gave us our first question, due today. It is “if you could change one thing in the Constitution, what would it be and why?”
I’ll talk a little bit about some of the responses in a minute, but here is the point of this post: At 5:08 pm today, one of my classmates sends an email to the entire class, sans the instructor, saying he knows it is due today, but do we know if there is an exact time deadline or if he has until 11:59 p.m. I had to restrain myself from responding to him because the only thing I could think to say was
Dear Dumb-Ass,
In the time it took you to compose your message and send it out to the entire class, you could have completed the assignment, making your stupid question moot.
Sincerely,
Erin
It’s just not that hard. One or two sentences. That’s it.
It seems like most of the class has probably already posted their responses. Some are rather silly, some are stretching it to say they are written in English, and some are pretty thoughtful. What I’ve found the most interesting, though, is how un-politically correct many of them are. I chose something I thought would be pretty uncontroversial because I did not want to offend anyone. Some people . . . not real worried about that. There are people who have no qualms about saying they want to deport illegal aliens in summary proceedings and get rid of the 14th Amendment provision that persons born on U.S. soil are citizens. And they are happy to say it in a way that makes them sound xenophobic and racist.
That is not to say that those proposed changes might not be good ideas. If you are going to make such a proposal, though, you should probably do it in a way that does not imply that illegal immigrants are lazy slobs who aren’t paying taxes, or are terrorists trying to cause civil unrest. Because clearly there are people in our class that were not born here and/or are not citizens, and if I were them I might take offense. Just a thought.
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So, what was your politically correct response?
I suggested that maybe the electoral college was not such a good idea, based on instances where the electoral vote was contrary to the popular vote, and that the winner-take-all system gives the appearance of diminishing the value of single votes in certain states.
That’s a pretty good one. The electoral college is frustrating just to try to understand. But isn’t the fact that the electoral college sometimes goes contrary to popular vote the whole point? It sort of evens out the influence of populous/unpopulous states. And if the electoral college vote always followed the popular vote, then you’re right, it would be useless. Plus, the winner take all does not apply in all states, I thought. Don’t some states assign their electors proportionally to their popular vote?
Anyway, that’s a good answer, when I read the question I couldn’t think of anything. I don’t know the constitution that well, though. Maybe one thing to change might be to let a woman or two sign it. But I don’t think that’s what your teacher meant.
Yay 100 posts!
Oh gosh, Michael, you raise so many good points! None of which were brought up by anyone in my class in response to my discussion post! Surprise!
I don’t know the answer to your questions. I thought the electoral college was winner-take-all, but that was learned way back in high school, so I have no idea these days.
I don’t see why it’s appropriate for the electoral vote to come out different from the popular vote in the way that does. It would be one thing if the electors took matters into their own hands and voted as they thought was best for the country, but they are all pledged and I don’t think the disloyal elector happens all that often, if at all. It just seems like it’s totally random when the electoral vote comes out different than the popular vote.
well, not to beat a dead horse, but let’s go deeper into this. California has 54 electoral votes. There are roughly 30 million people in the state (and for the purposes of hypothetical convenience, let’s consider them all voters). The election results are in. It’s a squeaker, 16 million people voted for Sally and 14 million people voted for Bobby. 54 electoral votes go to Sally. But suppose it was a landslide. 25 million votes for Sally and only 5 million votes for Bobby. Sally still gets 54 electoral votes, but she had 9 million more popular votes. In a popular vote count, 9 million is usually way more than the margin of victory. It just balances out the population discrepancy of the various states in terms of influence on the outcome. Still in hypothetical land, if all the other states put together couldn’t give Bobby enough votes to cover the 9 million vote deficit, but he carried them all except California, what is the fair outcome in a federal government where states are intended to retain a good amount of authority? Should the one state with the most people decide the election for everyone else? I just worked on a video about the Constitution, again, and it seems the most contentious divide over ratification was the issue of populism and how direct a democracy was desired. I suppose dividing results of an election for national executive by states the way it’s done is questionable. But it seems somewhat measured and less susceptible to capricious manipulation.
OMG, why do I write so much?
http://fora.tv/2010/09/16/Sep_17_1787_The_Constitutional_Debate_Begins#How_Populism_Nearly_Defeated_the_US_Constitution