Electors Almost Always Follow the Vote in Their State

The Electoral College is a “one-hit wonder”.

Texas Republican Art Sisneros says he has reservations about the president-elect, but not because of the national popular vote. Let stand the requirement of 270 out of the total 538 electoral votes, or 50.19%, to be elected president.

I suppose many would say the original objective still is met. Others would say skewed College outcomes fly in the face of true democracy and popular vote totals should be the only proof of electoral success. The electors meet on the first Monday after the second Wednesday of December, or around the third Monday of the month, which falls on December 19 this year. Gore received more popular votes but acceded graciously to the victor in the Electoral College.

How was the Electoral College founded? It was created to strengthen the agrarian elite, offer more federal power to slaveholding states, and counterbalance factionalism and polarization.

If Tennessee’s electors fail to cast their ballots for the candidate, they can be prosecuted, according to the Secretary of State’s office. Tucker also has family members in the military and she couldn’t look past the role Clinton played in the September 11, 2012, attack on the United States outpost in Benghazi, Libya.

But members of Congress can formally protest any faithless elector votes, and have them thrown out, when they officially count the ballots in a joint session on January 6, 2017.

“The idea being that the average citizen wasn’t qualified to choose political leadership”. I’m not sure that setup works out for Democrats exactly as they imagine. We’re not going to get into the democracy vs. republic debate, because no minds will be changed.

The compact is a straightforward means of enabling the electorate to express its will without a constitutional amendment abolishing the Electoral College. Maybe, like the founders, we want to give smaller population areas a bit of a boost.

In 29 states, there are either statutes or party rules that theoretically bind electors to honor state results. I also taught for a year at the University of DE, where it’s one Electoral College vote for every 315,311 residents. Hey….

I understand being a little down when the candidate you were rooting for didn’t win. This week he tweeted, “The Electoral College is actually genius in that it brings all states, including the smaller ones, into play”. Yet our democracy remains burdened with the Electoral College which effectively disenfranchised the 60,981,000 people who voted for Clinton in 2016, and the 51,000,000 people who voted for Gore in 2000.

“It’s very unlikely, because a Republican Congress isn’t going to agree and most states wouldn’t go along with it”, Swint said, adding that reforming the Electoral College is more realistic. And, as we now know, the Electoral College was established in Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, the Electoral College is the formal body which elects the President and Vice President of the United States.

Each of the 50 U.S. states-plus the District of Columbia-determines by local law how the electors are to be chosen. It is also consistent with adamant Democratic opposition to voter ID requirements and other voter fraud deterrents, which limit their ability run up votes.

Why is it so important?

Several barriers are in place preventing electors from turning “faithless”. Republicans control a majority of state delegations, so this route still benefits Trump. To refine his metaphor: Most people don’t really care how many points they get in Super Mario, they just want to defeat Bowser. “In the face of a lack of electoral competition, the interests of the citizens in those states could be largely ignored”. “The National Popular Vote bill accomplishes this”.

This raises another intriguing question: Is the Electoral College system fair?

The Electoral College in its present form is problematic but to offer it as the reason Clinton lost is reactionary and shortsighted. With a continuation of GOP dominance in state legislatures, will the lack of a Democratic bench of potential candidates, something that hurt their chances with weaker candidates running for the Senate in North Carolina and Pennsylvania (along with OH and Wisconsin, where younger, more energetic candidates would have been better than the old has-beens that they nominated) guarantee a lack of Democratic competition for the near future in congressional contests?

There are surely many haters who supported Trump, just as there were also many who supported Obama in the previous two election cycles.