When the official Electoral College ballots were cast for the 2000 presidential election, Bush won, 271 to 266. (One elector abstained, I think.) This outcome was to no one’s surprise; Bush had prevailed over Gore 271-267 after the whole Florida recount issue was over.
But what if three - and just three - Electoral College electors for Bush decided to cast ballots for Gore instead?
Gore would then have won, 269 to 268, but would those three votes truly, indeed, have handed the presidency to Gore? Or would some court have ruled the unexpected outcome invalid and still awarded the presidency to Bush anyway?
Are those Electoral College ballots only symbolic now, or do they still carry real, actual power to sway entire presidential outcomes?
In an election with a margin as super-thin as in Bush vs. Gore, was there tense nail-biting nervousness during the actual Electoral College official voting process (the 538 electors casting their ballots) for fear of unexpected faithless electors here and there?
*Could *three Bush electors have secretly banded together and agree to change the course of history forever by voting for Gore, if they had wanted to? Did they actually hold that much power?
It’s complicated. Read up on faithless electors.
Let’s back up the revisionism train here. The Florida results were court mandated, preventing 70,000 ballots that the machines had rejected from being counted. That could easily have awarded Florida, and consequently the election to Gore. Gore did, in fact, win the popular vote, for all that matters. We’re still stuck with the archaic electoral college.
Anyway, as to your question. I believe the answer is Yes, in theory. The electors aren’t technically required to vote the way they’re expected to. However, in practice this is highly unlikely. These people are chosen based on their loyalty and adherence to their party. Anyone who is at all ambivalent is kept well away from the electoral college.
I think. Perhaps someone who isn’t making a WAG will come along and clarify.
Ah. Good. I guess in some states, the electors are technically required to vote as expected.
I noticed in 2000, that a Washington, DC elector abstained in protest of the lack of representation DC has in the government. Had she voted, Gore would have only needed 2 more.
Yes, but what if a few break the rules anyway?
They are “technically required” in the sense that there are statutes requiring them to be faithful, but the states have no mechanism to enforce this requirement. An elector can not be impeached or recalled, and their votes can not be changed after the fact.
What in the op is revisionism? He or she was only asking a question about the ballots during the electoral college process.
It seems like a pretty moot point. The people chosen to be electors are picked for their absolute loyalty to their party. It’s hard to imagine them suddenly choosing to switch sides. Imagine somebody like Der Trihs. What are the odds that he’s suddenly going to decide to cast his vote for Mitt Romney instead of Barack Obama?
The only times when electors have switched their votes have either been when a candidate died or when an election majority had already been achieved and a handful of candidates decided to cast symbolic votes.
There’s only been one exception in which electors intentionally refused to vote for their candidate with the knowledge it might cost him the election. That was in 1836 when Vice Presidential candidate Richard Mentor Johnson won the general election but a group of southern electors refused to cast their votes form him because he was openly living with a black woman. The result was the election was sent to the Senate, which chose Johnson anyway.
Obviously it’s never been tested, but Minnesota has a fairly new law allowing electors to be replaced immediately if they fail to cast the proper vote.
I realize it’s highly improbable, but hey, where else can one pose far-fetched hypothetical questions and have them answered except here on the Straight Dope message board? 
Its unlikely to work.
The right to vote can be controlled by the state but once the vote is done, its purely federal.
There must be law which sent it to Congress in 1969… that law would prevent it being referred to the state, surely ?
“Congress has considered the meaning of this phrase only once, in January 1969, when it debated about whether to accept the vote of Dr. Lloyd W. Bailey, a North Carolina Republican elector who voted for American Independent candidate George C. Wallace rather than Republican Richard M. Nixon”
There’s nothing symbolic about the Electoral College.
Right. My question isn’t about likelihood - such a scenario is extremely improbable. Rather, it’s about whether the presidency would really have been awarded to Gore if 3 Bush electors had jumped sides, and whether some court would have struck the unexpected result down.
It may be archaic, but I still favor having some human beings in the process, as on the other side of the Atlantic when the Queen appoints a Prime Minister. If the Electoral College, or the Queen, did ever go against the will of the people to change the outcome, it would be likely be the last thing either one did as an institution. But it’s still a bit of a failsafe, in case the duly elected presidency or HM Government is clearly headed by a madman driven to start a nuclear war, then the humans of the EC/the Queen can at least delay things and ask the nation to collectively reconsider.
I don’t see any legal theory under which a court could strike down those results. But what others have said is true. These “faithless electors” have only acted as protest votes and didn’t switch sides when it really mattered.
I don’t see any legal theory under which a court could strike down those results. But what others have said is true. These “faithless electors” have only acted as protest votes and didn’t switch sides when it really mattered.
I think most people would agree that the original intent of the constitutional convention had been that the electors would function as independent voters. Each states would choose its electors and therefore have a major influence. But the process was supposed to be the electors would get together and decide who would be President.
That system is still nominally in place but the states have put tight controls on how these electors can vote. Laws have been enacted which require them to vote in an expected manner. The Supreme Court has ruled that these laws are constitutional. But I don’t believe it’s clearly been ruled on how enforceable these laws are. A state can require an elector to promise he’ll vote for a certain candidate but if the elector then votes for somebody else anyway is the vote invalid?
Read The People’s Choice, a humorous novel by political reporter Jeff Greenfield. In the story, a presidential candidate dies shortly after the election, but before the EC votes. The party instructs all electors to vote for the VP elect, who is an idiot. One elector can’t, in good conscience, do that, and leads a revolt among the other electors.
The story is funny and satirical, but AFAIK, accurate in its depiction of the potential legal and political issues with the EC.
(Unfortunately, it’s been so long since I read it that I don’t remember how it turns out.)
The Minnesota law kicks in before the vote is done.
Well, “revisionism” may be too strong of a word. However, the OP implies, perhaps unintentionally, that Bush definitely won the election. That’s simply not what happened. He was awarded the election by the court.