‘Faithless electors’, another sign of dysfunctional US electoral system

 

‘Faithless electors’, another sign of dysfunctional US electoral system

They didn’t teach us about faithless electors in grammar school seventy years ago, but they should have.

Since then I learned that I’m not really voting for Tweedledum or Tweedledee when I mark my ballot. I’m voting for Mr. or Ms. Nobody, a party functionary who promises to vote for my pick at the 50 state Electoral College elections roughly 5 weeks later.

Good system right?

Not exactly. No power in the Constitution, which set up the Electoral College to prevent direct democracy and to entice slave states to ratify the Constitution, requires those Nobodys to vote for my pick. And while 29 states and DC have laws requiring electors to vote for the state winner, they have never prevented a single faithless elector from voting for the state loser, or Donald Duck for that matter.

This convoluted system is not just an imaginary annoyance. It has occurred 157 tomes since Samuel Miles became Faithless Elector No 1 in 1796. Sam voted for Tom Jefferson instead of state winner Johnny Adams. Why? Because he could.

The last time this happened was just 8 years ago when 2 electors bailed on The Donald and 5 deserted Hillary.

What’s the big deal one might argue since the 7 faithless electors did not change the 2016 election? In a close Electoral College vote it could take just a few faithless electors to change the presidential winner. Just a single faithless elector could prevent either candidate winning, throwing the presidential election into the House of Representatives when the new Congress is sworn in late January. Good grief.

They’re still not teaching America’s future voters about faithless electors in civics classes today, if they even teach civics anymore. Maybe that’s a good thing after all. It might be too much craziness about America’s electoral process for the little tykes to process. Let them enjoy their electoral innocence for a while before discovering how dysfunctional the self-proclaimed ‘world’s greatest democracy’ really is.