Faithless electors in the United States presidential election, 2016

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The namesake of the Hamilton Electors, Alexander Hamilton

Some members of the U.S. Electoral College, also known as the Hamilton Electors, have declared their intent to assign as winner of the 2016 United States presidential election someone other than the presumptive President-elect of the United States, Donald Trump in the Electoral College balloting to take place on December 19, 2016, by coordinating votes in favor of an individual of their choosing, rather than the candidate for whom they have pledged to vote.

By becoming faithless electors, these electoral college members are attempting to deprive the position of President of the United States from the presumptive 2016 winner, Republican Donald Trump, in favor of another Republican candidate (and thereby also eschewing the winner of the popular vote, Democrat Hillary Clinton).

Although there is a combined total of 157 instances of individual members of the electoral college having voted faithlessly in over two centuries of previous US presidential elections, the first faithless elector dating back to 1796 and the last to 2004, 2016 is the first time a concerted effort has been made on the part of electors themselves to deprive the presidency to a president-elect, to "vote their conscience for the good of America" in accordance with Alexander Hamilton's Federalist Paper No. 68.

Background

The electors themselves are named on the presidential ballots of only eight states.

  State laws may either impose a fine on an elector who fails to vote according to the statewide or district popular vote, or may disqualify an elector who violates his or her pledge and provide a replacement elector. No elector has ever been penalized or replaced – nor have these laws been fully vetted by the courts. The states with laws that attempt to bind the votes of presidential electors are highlighted above in red.

In the unique system of presidential elections of the United States of America, which was established as a republic (representative democracy), the president is determined through the mechanism of the Electoral College whereby a presidential candidate is deemed to have won a presidential race if that candidate wins a simple majority of the electoral college vote.

Electors are selected based on a state-by-state basis; some states choose as electors all people who are pledged to vote for the winner of the popular vote within the state, while other states proportion their electors based on the outcome of their populace's presidential votes. The electors, once selected, are free under federal law to vote for a candidate other than the one for whom they were pledged. Twenty-nine states, however, have state laws requiring their electors to vote for their pledged candidate, but the Constitutionality of those laws has not been ruled on (they are currently being challenged), while the supremacy clause established by the Constitution provides that state courts are bound by federal law in the event that state law were to contradict federal law.

Only three times in American history has a presidential candidate lost the popular vote but achieved the electoral college majority, thereby assuming the presidency.

In the 2016 presidential election, Democrat Hillary Clinton won a plurality of the popular vote of the nation with a margin of almost 3 million votes, currently at over 2.8 million with the last postal votes still being counted; however, although Republican Donald Trump "lost [the] popular vote by [a] greater margin than any US President", he nonetheless won the presumptive tabulation of the electoral college votes based on a state-by-state win of state popular election results provided all electoral college members remain faithful and vote as pledged.

In the event that no one candidate receives a majority of the Electoral College vote, the selection of the president is made by the House of Representatives under certain Constitutional guidelines.

Counter-voting

In order to prevent both Donald Trump, presumptive winner of the electoral college (and therefore, presumptive President-elect) from the presidency without handing the win to Hillary Clinton (winner of the popular vote of the nation), various electors have indicated their intention to become faithless electors in a synchronized systematic plan.

In states where Democratic 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton won the state popular vote (and therefore presumptively won those electoral votes), Democratic faithless electors will assign the vote of their electorate from their pledged vote for Hillary Clinton to the name of a Republican other than Donald Trump. Conversely, in states where Republican 2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump won the state popular vote (and therefore presumptively won those electoral votes), Republican faithless electors will assign the vote of their electorate from their pledged vote for Donald Trump to the name of a different Republican candidate.

The primary goal of the faithless electors, thus, is to make Donald Trump's (and all other candidates') electoral college votes fall below the minimum 270 required to win the presidency outright. This would result in the winner of the Presidency to be decided by the House of Representatives from the top three candidates remitted by the electoral college members to the House of Representatives. In a less likely scenario, if enough Democrat and Republican electors were to shift their vote to a single Republican other than Donald Trump so that together they met the minimum of 270, then that alternative Republican would become President outright, by-passing procedures in the House of Representatives.

Purported number of intended faithless electors

In the 2016 election cycle, the threshold of 270 electoral votes to win the presidency outright can be thwarted by garnering a minimum of at least 12% of all Republican electors to become faithless, that is, 37 of 306 Republican electors.

As of December 5, 2016, several members of the electoral college, both from the Democratic Party and Republican Party, have publicly stated their intention to vote faithlessly, for a Republican other than Donald Trump, at the Electoral College vote on December 19, 2016.

At least three of the electoral college members who have publically stated their intention to not vote for Trump have been Republican electors. Two of these Republican electors later resigned, one willingly, the other by reaction against his public statement.

Texas Republican elector Christopher Suprun publicly pledged to not cast his vote for Donald Trump as allowed by Texas state law. Texas Republican elector, Art Sisneros, willingly resigned rather than vote for Trump. Georgia Republican elector, Baoky Vu, resigned in the face of reaction to his public statement that he would not vote for Trump.

Although it is difficult to ascertain how many more electors, especially Republican electors, intend to become faithless and vote for a Republican other than Trump unless they declare their intentions publicly, it has been reported that at least an additional 20 Republican electors had already accepted the free-of-charge anonymous legal counsel and support provided for Republican faithless electors to assist them in voting against Trump.

Speaking to the Washington Post, Lawrence Lessig stated that the number of Republican faithless electors may be higher than the 20 currently seeking advice, saying “the number is higher than that, it should be more like 30, but I feel confident saying there’s at least 20".

Suprun indicated that he had also been in confidential contact with several Republican electors who plan to vote faithlessly, stating that they would be "discussing names specifically and see who meets the [fitness for president] test that we could all get behind."

The Republican National Committee has mounted an expansive whip operation to ensure that all those electors selected to vote for the Republican nominee indeed do so.

On December 14, multiple Republican members of the electoral college had stated under condition of anonymity that they were being coerced with “threats of political reprisal," adding “that the Donald Trump campaign is putting pressure on Republican electors to vote for him based on . . . future political outcomes based on whether they vote for Donald Trump or not.”

Also on December 14, full-page ads funded by Daniel Brezenoff's anti-Trump Change.org petition, which became the largest in that organization's history with nearly five million signatures, ran in the Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Austin American-Statesman, Salt Lake City Tribune and the Tampa Bay Times; full-page ads ran the next day in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Wisconsin State Journal.

Advocacy by elected officials for electors to be faithless

On December 11 Democratic U.S. Representative Jim Himes (CT) wrote on Twitter that the Electoral College should not elect Trump, stating "[w]e're 5 w[ee]ks from Inauguration & the President Elect is completely unhinged. The Electoral College must do what it was designed for." On December 12, in an interview on CNN's New Day, Himes further remarked that he was troubled by several actions by the president-elect which were compounded with Trump's criticism of the CIA and the intelligence community.

The Representative opined that while Trump may have won "fair and square", Trump had subsequently proved himself unfit for the duties required of the presidency. He cited the intentions behind the creation of the electoral college and he argued that it was created for an instance such as the election of Trump.

Legal counsel and advocacy

Lawrence Lessig

On December 6 the Hamilton Electors' website was established to advocate the election of an alternative Republican as the next President of the United States. Lawrence Lessig, a prominent Harvard University law professor (and former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination himself), announced that he was "teaming with a California-based law firm to offer legal support for any members of the Electoral College seeking to oppose President-elect Donald Trump." Lessig said the counsel and support (namely Laurence Tribe, who has argued before the Supreme Court thirty-six times) would be provided anonymously.

Litigation

Federal judges in Colorado, Washington state, and California have adjudicated against Democratic electors' efforts to cast their votes for someone other than Hillary Clinton, thus leaving in place individual state laws binding pledged electors to their pledge with insufficient time to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court before the electoral college vote.

In states with laws against faithlessness, depending on individual states, voting faithlessly despite the laws may incur anything from no prescribed punishment, to simple removal and replacement of the faithless elector, fines, up to potential imprisonment.

Previous faithless electors have never been subject to said punishments by state judiciaries. The imposition of any punishments as prescribed by those state laws may open way to further litigation and appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court after the electoral college vote.

See also

Other articles of the topic Politics : Uttarakhand Kranti Dal, Ewald Max Hoyer, Social Activist, Incumbent, Anan Foundation, Frank Blackburn

Other articles of the topic United States : The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, MTV, Hazbin Hotel, Zoot (Software), Public figure
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• Hamilton Electors
• List of United States presidential electors, 2016

External links

• Hamilton Electors website

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