fandomhigh | Functioning Governments, Thursday, September 17, 2020

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Functioning Governments, Thursday, September 17, 2020

Today the classroom had a visual aid: a map up at the front of the classroom. "In direct democracies," Steve said, "your vote, individually, makes policy choices. This works very well in small settings: PTAs, some towns. It gets unwieldy in a national of 330 million people, which is why in the United States, we elect representatives who are supposed to represent our voices as they vote." He frowned. "Something more than a few have forgotten."

"These are called delegates," Tony added, avoiding looking at that map because it made him want to panic drink after the last time. Just to be safe. "States have a certain number of delegates based on population in order to represent their votes for presidential elections. Hence the less populous states having fewer and the more populous states have many, many more."

Steve nodded. "Every state's electoral delegate count is the number of Senators they have--two, for everyone--plus the number of Representatives they have in the House. And the electoral vote, not the popular vote, is what elects a President. Generally, the electoral vote and the popular vote give you the same result, but not always." Thus Tony looking like he was going to boot all over the classroom.

Look, they had this class for a reason.

"Sometimes there's just enough gerrymandering--which is a method of voter disenfranchisement that re-draws the lines of voting districts into a ridiculous shape in order to have a political party win by cutting off groups likely to vote for the opposing party--there's enough gerrymandering to do just that to make it so the delegates vote one way when the populous voted the other."

"The districts, where each Representative stood for about 200,000 people a hundred years ago, now stand for 700,000 people," Steve said, "so if you live in a highly populated state, like, say, California, your three million extra popular votes didn't translate in the electoral college."

This was depressing. "No other country has followed us down the electoral college road because, frankly, it's confusing and intentionally so, but it's baked into the Constitution and getting rid of it would take an amendment, which requires a massive effort," Steve said.

"So," Tony said with false cheer. "Let's discuss how you feel about this method of governance."

Because your teachers had Some Opinions.

"And then you can play around with the map to see how you can get to 270 votes," Steve said.

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Like you're living on Maalox and coffee.

Juillenne Milone (and Camden)

Wayne

Freya Crescent

Miles Morales

Adora

Arabella Baylor

Alara Kitan

The electoral college: America's form of cricket, which makes even less sense the more it's explained! Did Steve and Tony help you even a little here?

So we can't chuck the Electoral College into the sun: can you think of how to work with it?

"This just seems needlessly confusing," Jules shook her head.

"Well, the idea behind it was so that everything wasn't decided by three large states with most of the population," Steve said, "decided by the states with, well, less of the population. But today it shakes out to roughly the same thing but instead of fighting about California, Texas, and New York, we get overly invested in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin."

"Do these 'delegates' do anything, other than cast a vote?" Juillenne wondered. "Are they part of some council that helps decide policy?"

"No, they just cast the vote and then basically disappear back into the population," he said.

"Then that still doesn't make sense to me," Jules said. "Why those people? On what merit do they get to cast votes? And furthermore, why shouldn't things be decided by the 'states' with the most population?"

The concept that the United States wasn't really all that united on, well, lots of things, was something that nobody had yet explained to her.

"They're chosen by the political parties of each state," Steve said, "and each state makes up its own rules about who they are."

It was kinda sketch, yeah.

"Well if the deck is stacked against us, what can we do about it?" Miles asked.

Edited 2020-09-17 16:25 (UTC)

"Right now, frankly, not a lot," Steve admitted. "Two states--Nebraska and Maine--divide their electoral college results by their congressional districts, so that if you win the popular vote there, you win just that vote but not necessarily all of them. It's what is making Maine and Nebraska electorally interesting this year."

"I think we should start lobbying for a constitutional amendment," Arabella said.

And then, after a moment, she said, "Wait, is that where the borders are here? What about the UNT?"

Edited 2020-09-17 17:21 (UTC)

"The UNT?" Steve asked.

"The United Native Tribes?" Arabella said, and pointed to Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas on the map. "These four aren't part of the United States where I'm from."

"Interesting," Steve said. "Were they always left to be their own nations?" he asked.

"No, they were part of the US for a while, but then the Osiris Serum happened and the tribes got enough magic to tell the US government to go pound sand. It was a whole thing."

Edited 2020-09-17 20:59 (UTC)

"Sounds like it," Steve said, looking a little wide-eyed. "Good for them."

"I never thought about that maybe not happening without the magic part," Arabella admitted. "Weird."

How do you get to 270 votes? Can you do it without Pennsylvania and Florida? (Please, please, can you?)

Oh, God. This was math. Okay, Arabella, stay calm, you can do this. It's just addition and subtraction.

Wait. A problem has entered the ring. "Uh...we don't have four of these states where I'm from so our numbers are different..." No! Don't complicate the numbers!

That statement was enough to make Miles turn his head away from his own map.

"Wait. You don't have four states. What happened to them?"

Arabella pointed to the Dakotas, Wyoming, and Montana. "These four and like a chunk of Canada are the United Native Tribes. So we have..." she double checked the map. "Twelve fewer electoral votes total. Which means...hang on." She counted briefly on her fingers. "So we have 526 total electoral votes, so you need 264 to get a majority, right?"

“Uh, yeah. That tracks,” Miles said, still amazed by the four states being gone. “How did that happen? I mean the lack of four states.”

"They broke off in the late nineteenth century," which where Arabella was from was known as 'The Time of Horrors,' fun fact. "The tribes formed an alliance and told the US government to get out, and they had enough magic to back it up. It was a whole thing."

“Magic? Oh. Yeah... I guess that would have changed things,” Miles said scratching his head. “Makes sense for those states too.”

"Yeah, this is giving me flashbacks to a project we had to do in school about how things would be different if magic hadn't become widespread." Her shoulders slumped. "I just didn't expect to have to do math about it, even if it is pretty straightforward math."

“Does math trip you up a lot?” Miles asked. “Other than the online class I haven’t run into too much here.”

Arabella groaned and ducked her head. "I almost failed my magic trial because of long division. I was hoping I wouldn't have to do any math here, but my family made me sign up for online classes." Catalina was annoyingly right that she would need them if she went to college. "It's...it's going."

Wait. "Uh...forget you heard that about my magic trial."

Who are definitely arguing about the electoral college.

I would very much like to get off of this horrible, horrible ride, please and thank you.

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Functioning Governments, Thursday, September 17, 2020

Sign in 9/17

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Listen to the lecture!

Discuss!

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Make the states turn blue and red!

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Talk to Steve and Tony

OOC