Electors are typically chosen and nominated by a political party or the party’s presidential nominee. There have been a total of 165 instances of faithlessness as of 2016, 63 of which occurred in 1872 when Horace Greeley died after Election Day but before the Electoral College convened. In 14 states, votes contrary to the pledge are voided and the respective electors are replaced, and in two of these states they may also be fined.
About Faithless electors in brief
A faithless elector is an elector who does not vote for the candidates for U.S. President and U. S. Vice President for whom the elector had pledged to vote and instead votes for another person. Electors are typically chosen and nominated by a political party or the party’s presidential nominee. There have been a total of 165 instances of faithlessness as of 2016, 63 of which occurred in 1872 when Horace Greeley died after Election Day but before the Electoral College convened. In 14 states, votes contrary to the pledge are voided and the respective electors are replaced, and in two of these states they may also be fined. Colorado was the first state to void an elector’s faithless vote, which occurred during the 2016 election. In 2020, the Supreme Court also ruled in Chiafalo v. Washington that states are free to enforce laws that bind electors to voting for the winner of the popular vote in their state. The court ruled that states have the right to require electors to pledge to vote for whom their party supports, and to remove potential electors who refuse to pledge prior to the election. However, the court also wrote: The court also ruled, in Ray v. Blair in a 5–2 vote, that states can remove potential faithless electors even if the potential electors refuse to refuse to support their party’s candidate. The Supreme Court ruled in the case that the state can impose fines on electors who break their pledge. In the case of Minnesota, the state amended its law in 2004 to require public balloting of the electors’ votes and invalidate any vote cast for someone other than the candidate to whom the pledge was pledged.
In 2016, Minnesota also invoked this law for the first time in 2016 when an elector pledged to Hillary Clinton attempted toVote for Bernie Sanders instead. The consequences of an elector voting in a way inconsistent with their pledge vary from state to state. In some states, such as Indiana, the electors are nominated in primaries, the same way other candidates are nominated. In Pennsylvania, the campaign committee of each candidate names their candidates for elector. Some states, high-ranking andor well-known state officials up to and including governors often serve as electors whenever possible. The parties have generally been successful in keeping their electors faithful, leaving out the rare cases in which a candidate died before the elector was able to cast a vote. The United States Constitution does not specify a notion of pledging; no federal law or constitutional statute binds an electors’ vote to anything. As of 2020, 33 states and the District of Columbia have laws that require elector to vote. In other states, including Oklahoma, Virginia, and North Carolina, electors are nomination in party conventions. The parties are nominated by state political parties in the months prior to Election Day. The presidential election itself was not in dispute because Virginia’s electors voted for Democratic presidential nominee Martin Van Buren as pledged. The loss of Virginia’s support caused Johnson to fall one electoral vote short of a majority, causing the vice-presidential election to be thrown into the U. s. Senate for the only time in American history.
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This page is based on the article Faithless electors published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 06, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
