When will will it be set in stone who the next President will be? And, assuming the electoral college voters stick to their word, when will it be known then?
AND…
After the election but before the electoral college people vote, can Bush or Gore try to sway them to their side?
I believe the electoral votes aren’t cast until December and aren’t opened until January 3, by the new Congress. The electors can vote for anyone they damn well please, popular vote be damned. Of course, the electors are party loyalists who would probably not break ranks with their party, but it could happen.
It usually doesn’t matter, since the candidate that has been declared the loser by the people counting votes usually concedes the victory to the winner as soon as it’s known. If it’s really close, that might not happen for a while, but after all the votes (including absentees) are counted, the loser will most likely “drop out” of the running, and concede the presidency to the victor before the electoral college ever votes.
Jman
I believe KSO is right. There HAVE been occasions of an elector voting for someone other than the candidate he’s pledged to, but it hasn’t made a difference - yet.
A concession speech has no legal significance. It’s just a gesture that’s required only by the etiquette of a campaign. The concession speech shows that the loser is able to accept the results, tacitly acknowledging that the democratic process is more important than any campaign. We Americans have little patience for sore losers, anyway, and a sore loser will have a tough time getting nominated the next time.
I recall an election for governor of Ohio where the incumbent (James Rhodes -R) made a concession speech to John Gilligan, then the late-counted rural votes came in stronger than expected, and suddenly he’d been re-elected. There were some objections from the Democrats about the concession, but it didn’t mean anything. I don’t know if Gilligan made one at all, in his surprise.
Actually, only in 29 of the 50 states do the electors HAVE to vote the way the public did.
There are state statutes that purportedly require electors to cast their votes for the candidates they’ve pledged to, but those statutes have never been challenged and would probably be found unconstitutional.
What if an electoral person voted for NAder?
The only time I can think of when a member of the electoral college voted against his party was when Nixon was running. He said he couldn’t give Nixon his vote with good conscience.
I seem to recall dimly from history class that there was at least one other time when an elector did not vote as he was supposed to – because it was unanimous and he didn’t want there to be a unanimous vote. Or something like that. Any U.S. history majors want to help me out here?
Heck, one elector voted for Lloyd Bentson for President instead of Dukakis in the '88 election, I believe.
Yeah, here it is. One of the Democratic electors from West Virginia went with Bentsen instead of Dukakis in 1988. Not that it made any difference, of course.
I know the Libertarian candidate, John Hospers, got a vote in 1972 – must be the one mongrel_8 was thinking about.
Reagan received an electoral vote in 1976. Check out this site for everything you ever wanted to know about presidential elections: http://www.uselectionatlas.org
The Electoral Votes are supposed to be cast on December 18 in your state capital. Go there and try to lobby the electors. There names and votes are all public records.
Actually, there have been quite a few occasions. this site has detailed statistical histories of all the electoral shennanigans.
IIRC, George Washington was the only president to ever get 100% of the electoral vote. Later, someone else almost got a unanimous electoral vote but one of the electors changed his vote at the last minute so Washington would retain the title of the only unanimously elected president. I have been searching for the election in question, but so far to no avail. Does this sound familiar to anyone else?
DavidB, ElDestructo, have you ever heard of a newspaper column called The Straight Dope? Tons of good information in there.
What U.S. presidents won in the biggest landslides?
The column (including Slug Signorino’s illustration) can also be found on pages 135-136 of Cecil Adams’ book «The Straight Dope».
Monroe defeated John Quincy Adams 231-1 in 1820.
Glad to help.
[ul]
[li]1960 - Henry D. Irwin, Elector from Virginia. “Could not stomach” Nixon.[/li][li]1968 - Dr. Lloyd W. Bailey, Elector from North Carolina. Disturbed by Nixon’s Cabinet choices.[/li][li]1972 - Robert McBride, Elector from Virginia. Had Libertarian leanings, so voted for the Libertarian candidates. This made their VP candidate, Toni Nathan, the first woman to receive an electoral vote.[/li][li]1976 - Mike Padden, Elector from Washington (state). Voted for Reagan rather than Ford, not as a protest against Ford, but against Carter. He felt Reagan had the proper pro-life position.[/li][li]1988 - Margarette Leach, Elector from West Virginia. She was shocked to learn that she had no obligation to vote for her party’s candidates. As a protest to point this out, she voted for Bentson as President and Dukakis as VP. She tried to get other electors to do the same, but they didn’t.[/li][/ul]
Do the “third” parties have teams of electors ready to vote for their candidates? Or are they figuring that they don’t stand a chance anyways, so why bother?