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Strange Prescience
Mar. 22nd, 2008 09:13 amSo I was poking around on 270ToWin, which incidentally is a fun little site where you can run various Electoral College scenarios, and I was looking at the 1800 election, which is a pretty funny story, and I read the 12th Amendment, which is the one where they fixed the goofy original system. While I was reading it, I suddenly noticed something. This may also be true of the Constitution, and other Amendments, but I haven't looked. The entire thing is written sex-neutral. Not a "he" or "his" in sight. When referring to the Electors, it's always "they," even when singular. When referring to candidates, it's always "the person."
Was this deliberate? Were they actually contemplating the possibility that women might someday have the vote? Were they thinking so far into the future as to think that maybe women would not only vote, but be elected to the Electoral College, or even that women might be presidential candidates? It was 120 years before women were even allowed to vote; it was over 200 years before a woman would be a viable Presidential candidate. It just seems so implausible that they could have actually been thinking about that. So....why did they write it like that?
Was this deliberate? Were they actually contemplating the possibility that women might someday have the vote? Were they thinking so far into the future as to think that maybe women would not only vote, but be elected to the Electoral College, or even that women might be presidential candidates? It was 120 years before women were even allowed to vote; it was over 200 years before a woman would be a viable Presidential candidate. It just seems so implausible that they could have actually been thinking about that. So....why did they write it like that?
