Petition

I am fascinated by the phenomenon of the Change.org Petition. This petition, signed so far by nearly 5,000,000 people, urges members of the electoral college to change their vote on December 19 (four days from now), so that Hillary Clinton becomes the next U.S. president.

I had known about the petition, but hadn’t really thought about it, until the recent news about Russia having had so much success in hacking our recent election. I now find myself wondering what the members of the electoral college are thinking about that.

It must be intriguing for them to contemplate the outsized influence that a hostile nation has had on the electoral vote. Does it this “election hacking” lead them to question the validity of the outcome? Does it lessen, for some of them, the meaningfulness of that outcome?

Ultimately, I guess, their thinking may be influenced by how many people sign the petition. If lots of Americans think that it stinks that Russia gets such a large say in who becomes our next U.S. president, then I guess those Americans should sign this petition.

There might be other people who have different reasons for being unhappy with the outcome. “Hey,” the leaders of China might be thinking right now, “How come Russia gets to choose the next U.S. president? That is so unfair. Maybe we should get to choose the next one.”

And the leaders of North Korea might be thinking something very similar. I wonder whether they are negotiating with China right now about which of those two nations will get to choose the United States president in 2020.

Part of me is hoping that North Korea wins the negotiation. After all, you don’t want to get those guys angry. You wouldn’t like them when they’re angry.