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Scott Farkus wrote:

Soccerdad1995 wrote:I saw a very interesting young man being interviewed on CNN. He was wearing a T-shirt that said something about his girlfriend dumping him. His main grievance seemed to be that HRH may win the popular vote and lose the electoral college. I guess he thinks the system is "rigged".

The funniest part was when he told the African American interviewer that their vote would have only counted for 1/3 of a white person's vote back when the constitution was signed. He had the 1/3 part right, but totally missed the context. Maybe he was too emotionally triggered by his breakup to go to class the next day when they explained what the 1/3 actually related to.

Help me out - what is the 1/3 thing you're talking about? As I recall, the Constitution originally assigned slaves a value of 3/5 of a person for representation purposes, but slaves had no voting rights at all (nor did women at the time).

I believe any non-slave African American male citizens would have had full voting rights, so even in that context I'm not sure what the 1/3 is referring to.

I assumed that he was mistaking the counting of votes for the population count for representation purposes, but you are correct that this was 3/5 and not 1/3. So on second thought, I have no idea what the guy was talking about. Interestingly enough, the CNN reporter did not challenge his statement that Black votes used to be counted as 1/3 of a White vote.

AF-Odin wrote:This is a direct result of the "dumbing down" of our entire educational system and the change in what is taught in government and history classes. More time is devoted to teaching the history of the gay rights movement that is spent on understanding what was written into the Constitution, why there is a Bill of Rights, and what compromises had to be made in order to achieve ratification.

Exactly.

I think that our government has evolved so that states have less power and significance compared to the federal government. This is not a good thing, IMHO. But it does help to explain why people believe that we should just go to a straight popular vote as opposed to the electoral college. The great compromise and the need for small states to have influence on the federal government is something that most people just can no longer comprehend.

Get rid of the electoral college, then apportion senators strictly based on population (sorry Alaska and others, but you might get zero senators). State governments will eventually be as influential as your local utility district.

I saw a very interesting young man being interviewed on CNN. He was wearing a T-shirt that said something about his girlfriend dumping him. His main grievance seemed to be that HRH may win the popular vote and lose the electoral college. I guess he thinks the system is "rigged".

The funniest part was when he told the African American interviewer that their vote would have only counted for 1/3 of a white person's vote back when the constitution was signed. He had the 1/3 part right, but totally missed the context. Maybe he was too emotionally triggered by his breakup to go to class the next day when they explained what the 1/3 actually related to.