We’re gonna need a bigger Sam Wang.
And a big bottle of Scotch.
AIUI, there are two phases at which electors are chosen:
- Prior to election day, the party chooses a slate of electors.
- On election day, the state chooses one party’s slate of electors.
The first phase happens really early, such that some electors may be chosen before they’ve made up their minds for sure whom to vote for. That’s the phase I’m arguing should happen much later.
At this point, I’m reasonably convinced that this first step can’t happen after election day, so my first proposal is unworkable barring congressional action. It wouldn’t require an amendment as near as I can tell, just a change to federal law.
However, it appears to be a state, not federal, decision when the first step needs to be completed. As long as it’s completed prior to the second step, it shouldn’t violate federal law. And since the second step just needs to be completed before midnight on election day, presumably the campaign could (given a state law allowing it) nominate its slate a few minutes before midnight.
This wouldn’t 100% solve the problem, but it might make faithless electors a lot rarer, since they could be chosen from among those most enthusiastic of campaign workers.
In practical terms, of course, the system helps both parties’ bottom line–in that it lets them target resources to a few key states. If we had pure direct-election of Presidents, ad buys and campaign rallies would have to be diffused into additional areas. (Now, for example, the Democrats don’t have to spend a lot of time or money on California, because those winner-take-all electoral votes are pretty certain to come their way; but in a purely general election, they’d have to budget for California.)
Not that this has anything to do with Constitutional issues. But it speaks to the resistance there would be to any concerted efforts to do away with ye olde Electoral College.
Even without this recent development, I’m curious: If the election outcome were 270 Hillary, 268 Trump (or vice versa,) how many of you would feel that that would be the be-all-and-end-all of it, no further shenanigans, or how many of you would be anxious and not feel truly settled until the EC had actually cast its votes?
My reaction would depend upon the popular vote.
Put me in the “not feel truly settled until the EC had actually cast its votes” camp.
I’d be quite anxious. With all of this nonsense about foreign countries trying to interfere in the US elections, you’d have to worry that any elector could be bribed, threatened, or blackmailed.
This.
Or just do something stupid for stupid reasons. High pressure has a way of bending people who aren’t used to bearing high pressures.
More than that, I would put money on right wing interests (or thugs) influencing the electors. It would start with an attempt to contest the election. If Clinton gets under 280, we could still see this play out.
Not to mention there are still developments that can occur in between the election and the Electoral College vote that can cause electors to decide maybe things have changed and that justifies them voting another way
The pledge requirement, and after-the-fact penalties for being a faithless elector (pledged or not) are sufficiently different things that I think I’m on firm ground in saying the Constitutionality of the latter has not been tested.
One problem, though, is it wouldn’t enforce ‘faithful’ voting, either. Say Hillary wins that 270-268 election. One MI/MN Hillary elector decides to vote for McMullin. Their votes are invalid, nobody has 270, and the blocked attempt at faithless voting has the same result as a successful faithless vote. Either way, the outcome has been reversed - or would be when it gets to the House.
No, what we need here is a Constitutional amendment that, at a minimum, removes the actual people from this step, and ensures that electoral votes are no more than a scoring device, as they have functionally been for all the days of our lives.
Or allow the college to fulfill its role, which is to weed out someone a potential tyrant, but only under specific circumstances. Philosophically, there is a place for a committee that can jump in and say “Nope, sorry, you got it wrong.” But those circumstances are extremely rare. Actually, though, a president-elect Trump is the perfect argument for an electoral college, given the fact that he openly talks about violating the constitution. That, in and of itself, represents a clear and present danger to Constitutional law and the notion that a Commander in Chief is bound by the rule of law. If there’s a textbook example for why an electoral college should exist, it would be for someone like Trump. And if his election victory were to somehow pass and were the EC to sit on its hands and do nothing, then I think we could say, once and for all, the institution is utterly useless.
I think there’d be a good argument for that, if one could assume that a reasonable number of electors for each candidate took that point of view.
But I don’t think that’s a reasonable assumption. And if Trump wins on Tuesday, the way to bet is that the EC will almost surely ratify that result.
The Washington Legislature should just replace the faithless electors, as is their right in Washington. Problem solved.
Are they Sanders supporters or what?
The Electoral College can’t act as a check against tyranny, because in any case where they would so act, the voters as a whole would already have checked the tyrant. Trump is only a problem because a sizable fraction of the country doesn’t mind that he plans to violate the Constitution. And his electors will be chosen from among that sizable fraction. The current setup allows electors to change the outcome, but in practice, they can only do so for stupid reasons. Allowing stupid people disproportionate influence over outcomes is not a desirable feature of any system.
That said, though, if we’re going to get rid of the human electors, we might as well just go all the way and get rid of the electoral votes entirely. There’s no good reason to not just use the popular vote, beyond “we’ve always done it this way”.
What makes you think the EC will be more reasonable than the public at large? It seems equally likely that they’ll be worse.
I propose to you the same thing I propose to people who argue that torture is in very rare circumstances necessary: let’s put severe penalties in place anyway. Let’s say 2 years of prison time with no possibility of parole, at minimum. If a member of the electoral college thinks that the fate of our nation is at stake, let them sacrifice personally in order to make it happen. If they’re right, they’ll emerge from prison a hero.
Excellent post.
Excellent post also.
And thus we see the nub of the problem.
The EC will be effective at its currently-intended role only when the electors are *not *chosen on the basis of Party before Country. Until we can solve that problem the EC as presently constituted is either a loose cannon or a nullity.
ETA: As Chronos & LHoD just said while I forgot to refresh. :smack:
This is a possible halfway house that preserves the current political balance of power between large and small states while eliminating the faithless / corrupt elector issue at a stroke. As such it’s potentially politically doable. Even if it only goes a tiny distance towards true direct election of the President.
I’ve never heard of anyone being fervent about an elector. I doubt anyone could even name one.
Their job was to find somebody to express the political will of the Washington Democratic Party. I think it’s nuts, but maybe they’re cool with sending a recklessly vindictive Bernie Bro to stick a finger in Hillary’s eye.