Seriously, there isn’t, AFAIK, an officially recognized title or position of president-elect. It’s a descriptive term. The news media are referring to him as President-Elect Obama because it’s clear and it’s accurate enough. He has been elected - indirectly - by the US citizenry, although it is not that election that makes him President. And his transition team operates under the auspices of The Office of the President-Elect. So there’s still an element of presumption about it, but both the federal government and the people regard him as the president-elect, which is good enough for me. You wouldn’t be wrong to call him the presumptive president-elect, though.
Hence my comment about the Constitutional crisis. There would have to be so many faithless electors to swing this to anyone but Obama the result would be a complete negation of the will of the people (Obama won the popular vote, too) resulting in the whole concept of the Electoral College being called into question. There might even be riots in the major cities.
Jesus Harold Christ wrote this question to Cecil (at least, I assume it was he) and I suggested posting here since I didn’t think it was something Cecil would tackle. So, JHC, welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards! And, you see, it worked, you got an answer!
I find it interesting that the term dates back to the Constitution at least. I suspect it may be even earlier from British usage, since Gilbert and Sullivan (1885) poke fun of “daughter-in-law-elect” to refer to some affianced to the Son of the Mikado, but not yet married. The term would have had to have been reasonably well-known in England for them to make such a joke. Anyone able to find British cites that perhaps pre-date the US Constitution?
Alan Smithee’s quote was from the Presidential Transition Act of 1963, not the Constitution. And Chronos was citing the 20th Amendment, ratified in 1933. There was no cite for anything dating back to 1787 or earlier.
From a constitutional perspective, Obama doesn’t become the president-elect until Congress counts and certifies the electoral votes on January 6, 2009. From a statutory and common-sense perspective, obviously, he’s president-elect right now.
The general usage of “elect” as a suffix to mean “one who has been chosen for a certain office but not yet confirmed in it” is way older than the eighteenth century. It’s derived from Latin electus, used in the same way, and was frequently used to refer to those who had been chosen for positions in the church, but not yet consecrated. A typical example from the sixteenth century:
The notion that the term “daughter-in-law-elect” in the Mikado would have been intended as a reference specifically to the term “President-elect”, much less to the American use of that term for an incoming POTUS, is so unlikely as to be absurd. Doubtless Gilbert was simply making a parallel with such well-known terms as “bishop elect”.
If the Electoral count was one off, maybe. The faithless electors in the past have simply been a few that made a protest vote (or refused to vote as a protest), but they did not change the election.
In many cases it is illegal for the electors to change their vote in such a way they invalidate the election.
Their votes would stand, however. There are only two states where an electoral vote can be changed after the fact because of faithless electors; 22 others provide criminal penalties for the act, but can’t do anything to change the vote once cast.
Actually, come to think of it, Gilbert’s “daughter-in-law elect” wasn’t even a joke or an innovation in 1885; it was simply a standard contemporary term for a woman who has been chosen to be your daughter-in-law but isn’t yet married to your son.
Similar usages abound in literature of the period:
