Talk:Faithless elector

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[edit] Suggested alterations

Comment. This is an excellent list. I would suggest some alterations.

1) In 1984, the AP story on the meeting of the Presidential Electors in Illinois reported that one Elector attempted to vote for Geraldine Ferraro for VP. The remaining Electors were not impressed. They took a second vote, and the offending Elector voted for Bush as expected.

2) In 1948, two men appeared on both the Democratic and States Rights electoral tickets. One of them voted for Truman, the other for Thurmond. Parks therefore was not exactly a faithless Elector. NYT 12/14/1948.

3) In 1912, the Republican Party appointed N.M. Butler as the stand-in candidate to receive the party's electoral votes before the Electors met. They therefore should not be considered faithless. NYT 1/5/1913

4) In 1808, the Presidential Electors in OH did not support VP Clinton, who continnued his race for President as an Independent Republican after the Caucus. They should be considered faithless in the VP race. Chronicler3 18:35, 16 February 2006 (UTC) Chronicler3

Crud. I read this back on February 16, but was distracted before I could respond, and never came back.
1) Can you find a cite for this? If so, please add this item to the article.
2) Parks was pledged to Truman and Barkley and didn't vote for them, so by definition he was faithless. The real question is whether the other individual who was on both slates was faithless. If he had pledged to vote for Thurmond and Wright only if he were elected on the Dixiecrat slate, then he would be OK, but if he had pledged to vote for Thurmond and Wright full stop, then he, too, was faithless.
3) From the second graf:
On 158 occasions, electors have cast their votes for president or vice president in a different manner than that prescribed by the legislature of the state they represent. Of those, 71 votes were changed because the original candidate died before the elector was able to cast a vote.
In other words, under the article's definition, an elector pledged to a dead candidate has no choice but to be faithless. This is why Greeley's electors in 1872 are considered to be faithless (except for the three who actually voted for him and had their votes discarded).
4) In 1808, both Vermont's and Ohio's electors voted for Langdon as Vice President. The outstanding question is: were they pledged to George Clinton as VP? I'm under the general impression that they were not, but I'd love to see evidence otherwise.
— DLJessup (talk) 02:29, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

(The following post was originally placed immediately after item 1 in the previous post.)

Response. I am still trying to learn how Wikipedia works, especially the encoding portion. Here is a clip from the AP article, which appeared in the Greensboro News & Record (NC newspaper) on 12/18/1984: "The Electors were also choosing a vice president, and Bush enjoyed the same landslide as Reagan. But in Springfield, Ill., it took two ballots to get a unanimous vote for Bush. On the first secret ballot, one of the 24 Electors chose Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, Mondale's running mate. After several minutes of confusion, a second ballot was taken that was unanimous for Bush." Chronicler3 01:41, 25 February 2006 (UTC) Chronicler3

Excellent! And thank you! I went ahead and added the information to this article and to United States presidential election, 1984. Would it be possible to get the title of that AP article?
BTW, I moved your response from within my post to after my post. The following is just my personal opinion and in no way represents the official policy or recommendations of Wikipedia. I think it's a bad idea to embed responses within an original post à la Usenet or “fisking”. The problem is that, unlike Usenet, at any given time, there's only one current version of a talk page. This means that, while the response is usually perfectly clear, the original post becomes hard to read. This is not really a problem with a simple post-response; it's just that when the response gets an embedded response and that response gets an embedded response, the result is a hard-to-read chaos.
— DLJessup (talk) 15:34, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Faithless electors in 1884?

I came across a claim that Belva Ann Lockwood "petitioned Congress to count the vote of Indiana for Belva Lockwood on the grounds that the electoral college of that state had switched its vote from Cleveland to her, 'as it had an undisputed legal right to do.'" http://www.stanford.edu/group/WLHP/papers/lockwood.htm I don't know how much credibility the claim has. Schizombie 21:05, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Without knowing more, I'm loath to make any change to the article. Can anybody get more details?
— DLJessup (talk) 02:49, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

The Oxford Companion to American Law by James W. Ely cites Babcock (author of the article at the link above) in their entry on Lockwood, but doesn't mention the electoral college. The claim of her winning those electoral votes also is printed in A Place at the Table: Struggles for Equality in America (2002) on page 77, which I found from an Amazon Search Inside This Book search. No citation provided on that page for the info. Also apparently claimed in Uncle John's Giant 10th Anniversay Bathroom Reader, without citation. WIll continue to look for more info. Schizombie 07:25, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What's the point?

So why do they have electors at all? Why not just have the number of electoral votes automatically go the the candidate winning the state? 24.68.180.163 07:06, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

The decision on how to choose electors goes to the states. Not all states automatically give all electoral votes to the candidate winning the state. Some break it up. As it is, an elector is just something that "special" people get to hang on their wall to impress visitors. They serve no purpose as an email could get the job done faster. --Kainaw (talk) 19:21, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

So the state could decide in law how to apportion electoral votes, without using electors - which would eliminate faithless ones. There still seems to be no purpose other than a beaurocratic formality, which you seem to indicate is the case. 24.68.180.163 08:40, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

The key reason that there are still electors is that it would take a constitutional amendment to eliminate the electors. A constitutional amendment takes a lot of effort, and it would take a strong consensus as to the alternative—for example, there are quite a few proponents of direct election of the President and there are quite a few people who oppose direct election but still want the electoral college to be reformed.
The one time the electoral college has been revised, it took the shenanigans of the presidential election of 1800 to drive the American people to amend the Constitution—and it still almost didn't come off before the following election.
I don't see electors being eliminated until a “faithless elector” either decides or threatens to decide a presidential election. There are just so many other issues that people want to address.
— DLJessup (talk) 12:41, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
Also, it should be clear that "electors" and the "electoral college" are two different matters. We could get rid of electors and continue using the electoral college (sending votes to Washington DC in a FedEx envelope). We could get rid of the electoral college and send an elector to Washington DC to tell everyone vote counts for the state. So, the two should not be confused with one another. --Kainaw (talk) 13:23, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
The reason why there are electors, and not just a certain number of votes sent someplace (like weighted voting), is historical. Peole vote for "respected community leaders", who meet someplace and vote for a President. Presidents were no supposed to be directly elected - and technically, they still aren't. There is also really no such thing as an electoral college - all the delegates from around the country don't meet together. State delegations meet, usually at the state capitol, and vote. There votes are transmitted to congress. - Matthew238 03:41, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Because we are a federal Republic; that's "why." 69.245.80.218 (talk) 17:35, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Does this only apply to the US?

"A faithless elector is a member of the United States Electoral College who "

Since there are Electoral colleges other than the US Presidential Electoral college, couldn't the term apply to members of those electoral colleges as well? If this is a term that is solely used in the US but can apply to a member of any electoral college, the phrasing should be changed.

Originally, this article claimed that a faithless elector is a member of an electoral college. It was changed to the United States electoral college with the claim that only electors in the U.S. could be faithless. There was no evidence to back that claim, but I didn't care to push the issue. --Kainaw (talk) 13:13, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What states?

I want to know what states allow you to be a faithless elector. To me, this issue is so darn funny. :-) -Amit

The issue wouldn't be "which states allow a faithless elector" it, it would be "which states do not enforce the pledge of a faithless elector". That would be state-by-state election laws - very difficult to look all of them up. --Kainaw (talk) 17:50, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
And yet we're confident enough to give a number. Honestly, if we're able to say that (exactly) "Twenty-four states have laws to punish faithless electors," we should be able to name them. If we can't, it calls into question the accuracy and verifiability of the 24 number. (Granted we might not be confident in saying that the other 26 *don't* have laws, as to do definitively so would require a thorough examination of the election code, but we can at least imply it by omission.) -- 18:37, 16 January 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.104.112.63 (talk)

[edit] Minnesota, 2004

The statement "Minnesota's electors cast secret ballots, so unless one of the electors claims responsibility, it is unlikely that the identity of the faithless elector will ever be known." is quite incorrect. Anybody active in Minnesota politics knows who he was. He tried to change his vote as soon as they were announced, but the Secretary of State, a committed republican, refused to allow that -- thereby depriving John Kerry of one vote in the Electoral College. 207.191.150.48 01:49, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

If you can find a citation for that, add it to the article. MetaBohemian (talk) 12:56, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Total number of faithless electors artificially inflated

“1912 election: Republican vice presidential candidate James S. Sherman died before the election. Eight Republican electors had pledged their votes to him but voted for Nicholas Murray Butler instead.” REBUTTAL: The Republican electors became unpledged when Sherman died, and could vote for whoever they pleased.

“1896 election: The Democratic Party and the People’s Party both ran William Jennings Bryan as their presidential candidate, but ran different candidates for Vice President. The Democratic Party nominated Arthur Sewall and the People’s Party nominated Thomas Watson. The People’s Party won 31 electoral votes but four of those electors voted with the Democratic ticket, supporting Bryan as President and Sewall as Vice President.” REBUTTAL: Democratic-Populist fusion electors were free to vote for the nominee of either party.

“1872 election: 63 electors for Horace Greeley changed their votes after Greeley's death. Greeley's remaining three electors cast their presidential votes for Greeley and had their votes discounted by Congress.” REBUTTAL: The Democratic electors became unpledged when Greeley died, and could vote for whoever they pleased. Nineteen Democratic electors failed to vote for their Vice-Presidential nominee, Benjamin Gratz Brown, for Vice-President. Eighteen of these electors, however, did vote for Gratz Brown for President.

“1836 election: The Democratic Party nominated Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky as their vice presidential candidate. The 23 electors from Virginia refused to support Johnson with their votes upon learning of the allegation that he had lived with an African-American woman. There was no majority in the Electoral College and the decision was deferred to the Senate, which supported Johnson as the Vice President.” REBUTTAL: The Virginia delegation walked out of the Democratic Convention when Johnson was nominated, and refused to pledge their states electors to him. The Virginia Democratic electors were therefore unpledged.

“1832 election: All 30 electors from Pennsylvania refused to support the Democratic vice presidential candidate Martin Van Buren, voting instead for William Wilkins.” REBUTTAL: William Wilkins was the nominee of the Pennsylvania Democratic convention, which occurred before the National Convention. The Pennsylvania Democratic electors were therefore pledged to Wilkins, not Van Buren.

“1828 election: Seven (of nine) electors from Georgia refused to vote for vice presidential candidate John Calhoun. All seven cast their vice presidential votes for William Smith instead.” REBUTTAL: Georgia was the only state which had two rival slates of electors pledged to Andrew Jackson in 1828. The losing slate was probably pledged to vote for John Calhoun for Vice-President, and the winning slate probably unpledged to vote for Calhoun.

“1812 election: Three electors pledged to vote for Federalist vice presidential candidate Jared Ingersoll voted for Democratic Republican Elbridge Gerry.” REBUTTAL: There were no Federalist Presidential or Vice-Presidential nominees in 1812. Federalists informally backed DeWitt Clinton, an independent candidate nominated by the New York legislature. Clinton had no running mate. Clinton’s electors were therefore free to vote for whoever they wanted for Vice-President.

“1808 election: Six electors from New York were pledged to vote for Democratic Republican James Madison as President and George Clinton as Vice President. Instead, they voted for Clinton to be President, with three voting for Madison as Vice President and the other three voting for James Monroe to be Vice President.” REBUTTAL: The electors selected by the New York legislature were the result of a fusion between Democratic-Republicans and an independent faction who supported George Clinton for President. The electors were therefore free to vote for either Madison or Clinton.65.94.61.180 (talk) 17:44, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Paragraph breaks would be nice NuclearWarfare (talk) 18:04, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Retitling of the Page

Perhaps we should change it to Faithless Electors (United States). That would more clearly clarify the article's purpose and get rid of the annoying necessity for the citation in the first line. NuclearWarfare (talk) 16:45, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

If we can't find any other system with faithless electors, I suggest we just change it to "a member of the united states electoral college". BillMasen (talk) 19:20, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
The College of Cardinals is an electoral college, I believe. Though I'm not sure if that works for this example. NuclearWarfare (talk) 19:40, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
sorry I meant any other system with faithless electors. Corrected. As far as I know, all other electoral colleges either have electors who only represent themselves, or votes which are assigned automatically in accordance with the popular vote, rather than by flesh-and-blood electors. BillMasen (talk) 22:30, 23 April 2008 (UTC)