if the electors in most states are selected by the various political parties and are pledged to support their candidate how does an independent or write-in candidate get elected if he has no slate of electors pledged to him?
IIRC, state electors are not universally bound by political parties. One would need to check among the various states elector requirements.
If he’s on the ballot, he’ll have electors pledged to support him. He’ll need to file a slate of electors with his candidate petitions, along with the required number of voter signatures, in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. You won’t see the electors on the ballot in most states, but the Secretary of State will have a list.
State law varies as to how write-in votes for president would be filtered through the electoral college, in the unlikely event that a write-in candidate ever carries a state. Needless to say this has never been a live issue.
Please don’t answer questions if you are this ignorant about politics.
Far from there “always” being electors going to third party candidates, no such candidate has won a single pledged elector since 1968. The few instances of single electoral votes for non-candidates have been from “faithless electors” elected by the major parties.
No state assigns electors proportionally–not one. Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia assign all electors to the popular vote leader (plurality or majority), and two assign an elector to the winner of each House district, with two at-large votes going to the statewide winner.
Faithless Elector from Wikipedia.
However, the basic concept is that you obtain the consent of 538 people to be electors pledged to you (as noted above by others, whether that pledge is legally binding will vary with state election laws) and then complete the requirements to get yourself on the ballot in each state. Generally that’s accomplished by your supporters circulating petitions that meet certain minimum criteria. A typical set of petition requirements might be: valid signatures on petitions which together comprise 0.01% of the state’s registered voters including at least one signature from each of a majority of counties in the state and at least one signature from each congressional district within the state. Some states will have very stringent requirements; in some it will be very easy to get ballot space.
actually according to wikipedia they are
a little harsh don’t you think? thanks though for the answer.
I don’t think it was that harsh. Sheriff’s answer was almost completely wrong, and Freddy simply requested that he not answer questions in a field about which he is obviously unqualified to inform others.
And that same article says only 24 states have laws on the books to punish electors. My math is a bit rusty but I think that means 26 states do not legally bind their electors.
Since each state determines how the voting process works, you’d have to check it out for each state, normally through the State Secretary of State, who is generally the official responsible for running the elections.
For example, here’s how it works in Massachusetts for presidential candidates who don’t belong to either of the two major parties:
Sheriff’s post has disappeared so sockdom must be assumed.
I don’t know the entirety of the post. But given the statements quoted by Freddy, however, the harshness accusation is justified.
No proportional states, but the other two statements are correct.
Correct.
To me this clearly was referring to general elections for all positions around the country, not merely presidential elections. If so, this statement is completely correct.
Looks to me like Freddy badly misread the answer and overreacted. It needed a tweak of correction, not a hammer.
He said “electors.” In which general elections are electors chosen for positions aside from President and Vice President of the United States?
They can be punished after the fact, but they can’t be prevented from voting for whomever they choose. Once the votes are cast, they are valid and unchangeable.
He said “electors.” But every other word in this sentence: “Check the election maps and there are always scattered electors going to third party cadidates, sometimes a lot of them, enough to make the major parties nervous.” seems to indicate that he meant to type “elections.”
Maybe not. We’ll never know.
I doubt this very much. The post in general was about electors, and since the previous sentence specifically referred to electors I don’t see any reason why he should have meant “elections” there. I agree with Freddy that overall the answer was pretty clueless, and this misstatement was consistent with that.