Pogo
Diamond Member
- Dec 7, 2012
- 123,708
- 22,749
I'm thinking this USSC input is a good thing, not a bad thing: apparently TEN electors voted, or tried to vote, for someone besides who they were supposed to!! That's pretty awful and needs fixing.
From the article I read, I am not clear whether they were replaced or stopped before they did that, or whether their faithless votes counted AGAINST Trump.
The article said that analysis showed that fully five past presidential elections would have been changed by this many faithless votes happening! This is a much worse problem than I realized. I am sure it's not in the Constitution that these people get to simply decide the election on their own (purchased or grumpy) opinions!!
Important topic, thanx to the Thread Parent.
Last points first: the Constitution simply says that states will appoint electors, however they choose to appoint them, and then those electors vote. Nowhere does it stipulate who they have to vote for. As they are after all human electors, they make their human choice. Electors are chosen to decide who to vote for. The argument against "faithless elector" laws is that they remove that choice FROM the Elector, a choice built in to the Constitution.
In the last election Electors not falling in with the WTA mentality cost Rump two electoral votes and cost Clinton five. Three others were replaced by these laws that removed that Constitution-derived choice and rep[aced them with a robot, whose existence was thus rendered meaningless, hence the question before the Court now. Those three were all Clinton-pledged votes.
Fun fact: remember how Rump claimed to have won "more electoral votes than anyone since Reagan"? Not only was he completely wrong on recent Presidential elections, he didn't even win the most in 2016. Mike Pence got 305 Electoral votes to Rump's 304.