Faithless Electors = Hopeless Electors
Here’s What You Need To Know
With the official vote of the electoral college coming up next Monday, the bargaining phase of grief has begun for those who are still reeling from Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election. Petitions and articles are circulating all over the internet calling on electors who are technically pledged to vote for Trump to become “faithless electors” and vote for someone else. Unfortunately for those hoping to somehow change the outcome of the election this way, the depression stage should be coming soon when they realize the steps in the electoral college process virtually ensure faithless electors will not be able to change who will be sworn in as President on Inauguration Day.
The key points of this process include:
- This coming Monday, the electors will gather to cast their votes. In twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia, they must vote as pledged or face penalties under laws aimed at preventing faithless electors. Two additional states have laws that, instead of penalizing the elector, automatically void the vote of a faithless elector.
- On January 6th, 2017, Vice President Biden will open a joint session of Congress and two sets of tellers will open the sealed vote certificates from the states and read the results aloud to be entered into the congressional record. As each vote is announced, the Vice President will ask if there are any objections. All objections must be made in writing and must be signed by no fewer than one member of the House of Representatives and one member of the Senate.
- If there are objections, the House and Senate meet separately to discuss them with a two-hour limit on these meetings. Each member has a maximum speaking time of five-minutes, and when the joint-session resumes, the conclusions of the meetings are announced. In order for the challenged electoral college vote to be rejected, both the House and Senate must agree.
- The final step, if the faithless electors were somehow successful in blocking Trump from reaching 270 votes in the electoral college and withstood challenges to faithless electors in Congress, would be for a vote of the House of Representatives with each state delegation having one vote. Considering the House is controlled by the GOP, all of whom were just elected by the same voters who elected Trump, they would end up simply electing him there. Meaning, even if these faithless electors somehow miraculously get what they want, it all amounts to little more than a symbolic parlor trick that still leave Donald Trump becoming President on January 20th.
In 1836, after learning that President-elect Martin Van Buren’s vice-presidential running mate, Richard Johnson, was ‘living in sin’ with an African-American woman, faithless electors attempted to alter the election results during the vote of the electoral college. Once Johnson failed to achieve the majority, his election went to the U.S. Senate, who promptly voted him into the office he had already won. That is the closest faithless electors have come to achieving anything in American history. The bottom line is, faithless electors have never been successful and they aren’t starting now.
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