Saturday, January 15, 2011

CONSTITUTION 101 : SCORE OF CONGRESS VS THE PEOPLE

Elected officials who took the test scored on average 5 percentage points lower than the national average (49 percent vs. 54 percent). AOL News gives some example findings:


  • Only 49 percent of elected officials could name all three branches of government, compared with 50 percent of the general public.
  • Only 46 percent knew that Congress, not the president, has the power to declare war — 54 percent of the general public knows that.
  • Just 15 percent answered correctly that the phrase “wall of separation” appears in Thomas Jefferson’s letters — not in the U.S. Constitution — compared with 19 percent of the general public.
  • And only 57 percent of those who’ve held elective office know what the Electoral College does, while 66 percent of the public got that answer right. (Of elected officials, 20 percent thought the Electoral College was a school for “training those aspiring for higher political office.”)
  • Overall, our sample of elected officials averaged a failing 44 percent on the entire 33-question test, 5 percentage points lower than the national average of 49 percent.



http://www.theblaze.com/stories/are-you-smarter-than-an-elected-official/

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