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The Electoral College just got expanded, per U.S Court of Appeals. Your thoughts?

Perotista said:
We have had faithless electors all throughout our history. This ruling would only effect the states which have laws on their books about electors voting for whomever won the popular vote. Here's the list.

Faithless elector - Wikipedia

States choose their electors in various way. Each candidate on the Georgia ballot must submit a slate of electors to our secretary of state prior to the election. Whomever wins the Georgia popular vote, it is that candidates slate that cast Georgia's electoral votes. Some states choose electors during the primaries, some at party conventions, who knows how many different ways the electors are chosen? I was an elector for Ross Perot in 1996 and if he had won Georgia, I would have cast my electoral vote for him.

Unless one is from one of those states which had faithless elector laws, this ruling doesn't effect you. Then depending on how those state select electors, it probably won't effect most of them at all. I don't see this as a big deal. 167 times there has been faithless electors in our history.

29 states have faithless elector laws, but in 20 of those 29 states the electoral vote is counted as cast. No penalty. In the remaining 8, the faithless elector is replaced with one who will cast his vote for the candidate that won the popular vote. In reality, this ruling might effect only 9 states. Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Utah.

Faithless Elector State Laws - FairVote

The ruling isn't earth shattering as it hasn't any effect at all on 41 states. Besides, in most states the electors cast their votes in their respective state capitals long after the general election. That being the second Monday after the first Wednesday in December.
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Your FairVote link shows 19 states without laws as to how EC electors must vote. So that’s 19 states so far where electors could go faithless.

Your link also shows that 21 states and DC have laws that count the faithless vote. The other 9 states replace the FE, which could also be challenged in court.

Thus, in a very close EC vote, faithless electors in at least 40 states and DC could either throw the election to the presumed EC loser, or throw it into the House/Senate.
 
Linc said:
Your FairVote link shows 19 states without laws as to how EC electors must vote. So that’s 19 states so far where electors could go faithless.

Your link also shows that 21 states and DC have laws that count the faithless vote. The other 9 states replace the FE, which could also be challenged in court.

Thus, in a very close EC vote, faithless electors in at least 40 states and DC could either throw the election to the presumed EC loser, or throw it into the House/Senate.
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Possible I presume. The House hadn't decided the president since 1824. That was well before the two party system. There were four viable candidates back then. You have to go back to 1968 to find a third party or independent candidate winning a state. George Wallace, basically a regional candidate accomplished that winning 5 states and 46 electoral votes. Thurmond carried 4 states in 1948, 39 electoral votes, but again Thurmond as a regional candidate. Robert M. La Follette won Wisconsin in 1924 and then there was the Teddy Roosevelt 1912 election which enabled Wilson to win.

Even with the above, the electoral vote count wasn't close. Since 1900, 2000 was the only election that comes to mind where a couple of faithless electors might have made a difference. I highly doubt with our two party system that one or the other won't reach 270. It's possible, but highly not probable. It's also possible I might win the lottery. Unless a viable third party rises to challenge the monopoly of Republicans and Democrats on our two party system, worrying about a faithless elector or two is a valuable waste of time.
 
maquiscat said:
There is a point of red tape that even governments won't cross. Even so, Wyoming still gets only one vote going to the Federal level.

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Electoral College allocates one vote for each Federal Representative in DC.

Wyoming gets one electoral Rep for each Senator and each Congressman.
 
This is page 6 of the thread so maybe it's been covered, but a basic idea of the EC was to have electors who could act as a brake on the unwise impulses of a poorly informed electorate. The electors would be leading citizens, not political hacks. So, today, we continue to have the EC but we've traded leading citizens for the hacks.
 
code1211 said:
Electoral College allocates one vote for each Federal Representative in DC.

Wyoming gets one electoral Rep for each Senator and each Congressman.
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When out that way, if it is good enough for law making, it's good enough for the election of the president.

That said, instead of voting for president, maybe we should know who our EC choices are and vote for them instead.

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Perotista said:
That's the way we do it down in Georgia. Each presidential candidate on the ballot submit's his slate of electors to the Secretary of State prior to the election. Whomever wins the popular vote, that slate of electors casts their electoral votes for Georgia. In 1996 I was an elector for Perot. Had he won Georgia's popular vote, I would have cast my electoral vote for him.

I don't know how many states have laws stating an elector must cast their vote for whomever wins that state's popular vote. There were four faithless electors the 2016 election. The final electoral vote count was Trump 304, Clinton 227, others 4. Faithless electors or electors casting their electoral votes for candidates who didn't win their states has been going on since the inception.

Faithless elector - Wikipedia

The ruling I don't think will have any effect.
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actually it has a huge effect. it means that this national popular vote thing just went out the window.
the other effect it has is that states cannot replace electors with other electors.
so in other words clinton actually just lost a vote and there were several other electors that didn't vote for
clinton either that were replaced. there were more people that were unfaithful to clinton than to trump.
 
Acadia said:
I find this fascinating. I always assumed any given elector cast his or her vote for the popular vote winner in their state. Until 2016, when there was another layer added to attempting to thwart Trump's win by appealing to electors (brow beating) to not cast their vote for Trump.
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This is usually the case, but electors can vote however they want to.
 
ludin said:
actually it has a huge effect. it means that this national popular vote thing just went out the window.
the other effect it has is that states cannot replace electors with other electors.
so in other words clinton actually just lost a vote and there were several other electors that didn't vote for
clinton either that were replaced. there were more people that were unfaithful to clinton than to trump.
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Actually the ruling effects just 9 states. Those 9 states would replace the faithless elector with one who would vote for whom won their state's popular vote. Another 20 have faithless elector laws, but let the faithless elector's vote count as cast and does nothing. the rest have no law.

Faithless Elector State Laws - FairVote

The ruling in reality has little effect unless you live in one of 9 states which are shown in the link. Then if the candidate and or party choose their electors wisely, it won't happen.
 
Perotista said:
Actually the ruling effects just 9 states. Those 9 states would replace the faithless elector with one who would vote for whom won their state's popular vote. Another 20 have faithless elector laws, but let the faithless elector's vote count as cast and does nothing. the rest have no law.

Faithless Elector State Laws - FairVote

The ruling in reality has little effect unless you live in one of 9 states which are shown in the link. Then if the candidate and or party choose their electors wisely, it won't happen.
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It's only that district now, but that's unlikely to continue. The Supreme Court is unlikely to leave inconsistent laws in place on this. And since the Supreme Court is now corrupted by Republicans...
 
JackA said:
This is page 6 of the thread so maybe it's been covered, but a basic idea of the EC was to have electors who could act as a brake on the unwise impulses of a poorly informed electorate. The electors would be leading citizens, not political hacks. So, today, we continue to have the EC but we've traded leading citizens for the hacks.
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Ya, back when the country was 90% farmers who could hardly spend a lot of time on politics. Now, the system is exploitable and anti-democracy for the wrong reasons.
 
Perotista said:
Actually the ruling effects just 9 states. Those 9 states would replace the faithless elector with one who would vote for whom won their state's popular vote. Another 20 have faithless elector laws, but let the faithless elector's vote count as cast and does nothing. the rest have no law.

Faithless Elector State Laws - FairVote

The ruling in reality has little effect unless you live in one of 9 states which are shown in the link. Then if the candidate and or party choose their electors wisely, it won't happen.
Click to expand...

right but it sets precedent for other similar suits. i have a feeling this will end up before the SCOTUS.
 
ludin said:
right but it sets precedent for other similar suits. i have a feeling this will end up before the SCOTUS.
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We've had faithless electors since the inception. I think there has been 167 of them since 1800. The constitution give the power to the states in how the states choose their electors as the constitution states, "the manner in which the state's legislature may direct."

The way I read that is the states can choose the electors anyway it wants. But it doesn't give the states the power to tell the electors how to vote. Now anytime I try to predict on how the SCOTUS would rule, I always get it wrong.

then again if the SCOTUS determines this is strictly a state issue as I'm pretty sure that is what the Constitution makes it, they may uphold faithless elector laws. Although the framers thought electors were needed as a buffer between the people and the actual casting votes for the presidency. In their mind, if an elector thinks the people made the wrong decision, he had the power to correct it. That may go back to original intent. Until 1820 or so most states let their state legislature choose whom to cast their electoral votes for, no popular vote. It wasn't until after the civil war that all the states went to the popular vote.

Who the heck knows? All I know is 21 states have no laws against faithless electors, another 20 do, but have no penalty and counts the faithless elector's votes anyway. Those 20 might as well not have the law. Then there are the 9 which won't count the faithless elector vote, replace the faithless elector with one which will vote the way the state's popular vote went.
 
Perotista said:
We've had faithless electors since the inception. I think there has been 167 of them since 1800. The constitution give the power to the states in how the states choose their electors as the constitution states, "the manner in which the state's legislature may direct."

The way I read that is the states can choose the electors anyway it wants. But it doesn't give the states the power to tell the electors how to vote. Now anytime I try to predict on how the SCOTUS would rule, I always get it wrong.

then again if the SCOTUS determines this is strictly a state issue as I'm pretty sure that is what the Constitution makes it, they may uphold faithless elector laws. Although the framers thought electors were needed as a buffer between the people and the actual casting votes for the presidency. In their mind, if an elector thinks the people made the wrong decision, he had the power to correct it. That may go back to original intent. Until 1820 or so most states let their state legislature choose whom to cast their electoral votes for, no popular vote. It wasn't until after the civil war that all the states went to the popular vote.

Who the heck knows? All I know is 21 states have no laws against faithless electors, another 20 do, but have no penalty and counts the faithless elector's votes anyway. Those 20 might as well not have the law. Then there are the 9 which won't count the faithless elector vote, replace the faithless elector with one which will vote the way the state's popular vote went.
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The power to "change" rather than "correct" would be more appropriately stated.

It wasn't until 1913, when Wilson was President that the 17th amendment was passed and ratified reducing the powers of States to have a voice in Congress, along with the 16th amendment and Federal Reserve Act, which "fundamentally changed" our form of government into becoming a more collectivist form of government.
 
maquiscat said:
When out that way, if it is good enough for law making, it's good enough for the election of the president.

That said, instead of voting for president, maybe we should know who our EC choices are and vote for them instead.

Sent from my Z982 using Tapatalk
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The problem with "Faithless Electors" has always existed.

I "feel" like the Framers planned that the way the electoral process was defined would assure that the House determined all Presidential Elections.

The rise of the two party in the 1800 time frame scuttled that and put the real selection authority into the hands of the Electoral College.

I could be real wrong on this. Article 2, Section 3 says:

3: The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves.
And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate.
The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted.

The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President.

But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice.
In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President.
But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President.8
 
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