What if faithless electors changed the winner of an election?

[asahi]

If a republican were to win a race because of a faithless elector, we’d probably hear a lot about how it’s perfectly constitutional and that we should continue worshipping our constitution as though it were a bible. If, on the other hand, a democrat were to win because of faithless electors, we’d have states passing constitutional amendments to stop this outrage.

Basically it was the republicans who proposed the 2 term limit amendment to the constitution. Got tired of having their butts whupped by FDR.

[ElvisL1ves]

@asahi

Basically it was the republicans who proposed the 2 term limit amendment to the constitution. Got tired of having their butts whupped by FDR.

And they used a brief period of majority to pass the thing - to spite a dead man.

[Steve_MB]

@Chronos

If the incumbent got 50.499%, did he clearly win? Then why would your rule say to throw him out?

No matter what your procedure, you’re going to have some line where, just a little bit on this side of the line, guy A wins, and just a little bit on that side of the line, guy B wins. And if the outcome is really close to that line, you’re going to be unsure which side of the line it’s really on.

If the procedure is “have a recount if the vote is within X threshold of a tie”, then there’s no real problem, as long as X is large enough that a recount is extremely unlikely to affect the outcome of an election with an initial-count vote tally near (50%+X) to (50%-X). The uncertainly is whether or not to have a recount that is almost guaranteed to leave the result unaffected. It only becomes a problem if silly Rube Goldbergery is introduced, e.g.:

You’d have to create a better recount provision than just “do a national recount”. We’d be best off just assuming a tie and having a tiebreaker rule of some sort if the election is within 0.5%. A national recount would be a nightmare. My preferred tiebreaker rule would be that incumbent party loses if it’s that close.