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Spin Zone / Re: 269-269 - who?
« on: November 03, 2016, 01:46:21 PM »Of course all this assumes that the Electoral College elector is "faithful" and votes for the person he/she is pledged to vote for. Really, nothing to prevent an Electoral College elector from saying "Screw this, I'm not voting for x, I'm voting for y." An interesting check against the people going against the establishment and popularly electing a [doofus | criminal]. The house always wins.
I knew of a couple faithless electors, but hadn't realized there were so many cases of that happening in U.S. electoral history:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector
A couple cases with the most such faithless electors (not including cases where a candidate died):
- 1832 election: Two National Republican Party electors from the state of Maryland refused to vote for presidential candidate Henry Clay and did not cast a vote for him or for his running mate. All 30 electors from Pennsylvania refused to support the Democratic vice presidential candidate Martin Van Buren, voting instead for William Wilkins.
- 1836 election: The 23 electors from Virginia were pledged to vote for Democratic candidates Martin Van Buren (for President) and Richard Mentor Johnson (for Vice President). However, they abstained from voting for Johnson, because of his open (and therefore scandalous) liaison with a slave mistress. This left Johnson with one fewer than a majority of electoral votes. Johnson was subsequently elected Vice President by the Senate.