For diehard Democrats holding out hope that they won’t have
to live
through a Donald Trump presidency, there is a last, incredibly long shot
for them latch onto — a surprise twist in the Electoral College.
Though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 200,000,
Trump has won the minimum of 270 electoral votes necessary to be elected
president. As of late Wednesday, he had 290 to Clinton’s 228.
According to the Constitution, chosen electors of the
Electoral College are the real people who will vote for president, when they
meet on Dec. 19 in their respective state capitals.
However, there is nothing stopping any of the electors from
refusing to support the candidate to whom they were bound or abstaining from
voting.
There’s even a name for it: becoming a “faithless elector.”
Although the idea of the electors trying to reverse the vote
is occasionally discussed — such as after the incredibly close 2000 election in
which George W. Bush narrowly beat Al Gore — going “faithless” is exceedingly
rare.
More than 99 percent of electors throughout American history
have voted as pledged, according
to an analysis by the New York Times.
The last faithless elector reared his roguish head back in
2004, when a lone anonymous voter in Minnesota declined to vote for Democrat
John Kerry and instead voted for Kerry’s running mate, John Edwards.
The rogue’s vote was purely ceremonial, as Bush already had
286 electoral votes ensuring his re-election.
Faithless electors are barred in only 29 states from
ignoring the will of the voters, though the penalties are light. And a
faithless elector has never swung an election.
The Founding Fathers created the Electoral College because
they were actually “afraid of direct democracy,” according
to FactCheck.org.
In fact, Alexander Hamilton thought the electors would make
sure that “the office of president will never fall to the lot of any man who is
not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.”
Kehinde Oladele sends this piece from the US.
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