Speaking of coffee...

Speaking of coffee (see three posts back) I left work early enough for the gormet coffee chain in my building to still be open. I stopped to get me a cup and checked out their trivia question which entitles you to 10 cents off. For a while I wrote this store's trivia questions for a free cup of coffee every day. I told you I was a junkie. I was a coffee trivia whore. I was fired when a new assistant manager wanted the job, and since she was essentially a free trivia writer, I was fired.

Anyway, I, always looking for a bargain, checked out the question. It was as follows:

"This President defeated his opponent by exactly 10,000 votes."

I, being the political savvy and smart person that I am, said it was a trick question and that the answer was no one. My reasoning was that a President is elected by the Electoral College, which has always had fewer than 10,000 possible votes, and thus no President had ever won by 10,000. The person behind the counter said that it refered to the votes in the election. I argued that the President didn't win by the margin of votes in the popular vote. He won by the getting the most votes in the Electoral College. I continued that our current President won his first election after losing the popular vote, and that he was the second President to do that. Thus, no President "wins by X number of popular votes" ever.

I didn't get the 10 cents off because I was getting the refill price for using my own cup, which meant I couldn't get the discount. Still, the issue couldn't go unchallenged.