Article on Faithless Electors Watch [View All]

[Gothmog]

Here is an intersting article on the concept of faithless electors. See http://slate.msn.com/id/2110786

Four years ago, it struck me as a very real possibility that three Bush electors would betray the Republicans and cast their votes for Al Gore, thereby aligning Gore's popular-vote plurality with an Electoral College victory. After all, I reasoned, in recent presidential elections there had more often than not been a "faithless elector" (and if you count the "Greeley faithless," of whom only a tiny elite of Electoral College bores is aware, then going all the way back to George Washington there have been more faithless electors than presidential elections). Perhaps the trauma of Bush's popular-vote loss would persuade two Republicans outraged by the antidemocratic workings of the Electoral College to jump ship. There was, after all, no federal prohibition against their doing so, and state laws binding electors to the popular vote within their state are generally thought unconstitutional. The Nation magazine very naughtily urged that three Republican electors step forward to spare the nation four years of George W. Bush, which in retrospect sounds like an excellent idea. But it was not to be. ....

The magic number for 2004 is 18. If 18 Bush electors betray both their party and the popular vote and cast their votes for John Kerry on Dec. 13—when, as we Electoral College bores like to point out, the real presidential election takes place in state capitals around the country—then John Kerry will become president. It isn't remotely likely, and it would violate the principle of democratic government (just as the Electoral College itself does). But it remains in the realm of the possible.

The one presidential elector who has threatened to go faithless this year is a Republican. He is Richie Robb, mayor of Charleston, W. Va., and three months ago he was threatening to withhold his electoral vote from Bush to protest the president's policies. A little more than a month ago he reaffirmed that threat. After the election, Robb said that Bush's margin of victory in West Virginia was sufficiently great that he would probably vote for Bush after all, but he still refused to say so for certain. Today is the deadline for states to replace electors and still keep their electoral vote count "presumptively valid" when Congress formally tallies the votes on Jan. 5. (Yet another argument against the Electoral College: This ceremonial crap takes more than two months to wrap up.) Yet Robb, bafflingly, has not been dropped as a Bush elector. So that may be one faithless elector right there.