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| JEWEL SAMAD,JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP/Getty |
The liberal effort to encourage electors to defect only further degraded American political norms.
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When Donald Trump won the presidential election in November, some liberals and activists had a cool-sounding idea. What if, they mused, they could in fact block his win through the Electoral College, which actually casts the ballots that will officially make Trump president?
But when the electors gathered across the country Monday, this plot backfired embarrassingly — more electors defected from Hillary Clinton than from Trump.
Overall, Clinton lost five electors from states she won — three of whom instead cast their votes for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, one of whom voted for Bernie Sanders, and the other of whom voted for Faith Spotted Eagle, an activist involved in protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Meanwhile, three electors in other states Clinton won attempted to defect from her, but two were replaced with Clinton-supporting alternates and the other one changed his mind after a revote.
Now, these defections won’t have any effect on the outcome, since Trump had a comfortable majority of pledged electors. All but two of the GOP nominee’s electors stuck by him, giving him 304 electoral votes in total. (One defector backed Ron Paul; the other backed John Kasich.)
But that doesn’t mean the Electoral College system is sound. Instead, Monday’s shenanigans further spotlight the glaring weaknesses in our country’s bizarre, anachronistic Electoral College system that have long been evident.
The record number of defections for the modern era — there hasn’t been more than one faithless elector in any one election in the past century — proves that the Electoral College isn’t a system that can be relied on to accurately reflect the will of voters in the states. And yet it also isn’t a system where electors feel completely free to make up their own minds.
Læs videre: http://www.vox.com/2016/12/19/14012970/electoral-college-faith-spotted-eagle-colin-powell
But when the electors gathered across the country Monday, this plot backfired embarrassingly — more electors defected from Hillary Clinton than from Trump.
Overall, Clinton lost five electors from states she won — three of whom instead cast their votes for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, one of whom voted for Bernie Sanders, and the other of whom voted for Faith Spotted Eagle, an activist involved in protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Meanwhile, three electors in other states Clinton won attempted to defect from her, but two were replaced with Clinton-supporting alternates and the other one changed his mind after a revote.
Now, these defections won’t have any effect on the outcome, since Trump had a comfortable majority of pledged electors. All but two of the GOP nominee’s electors stuck by him, giving him 304 electoral votes in total. (One defector backed Ron Paul; the other backed John Kasich.)
But that doesn’t mean the Electoral College system is sound. Instead, Monday’s shenanigans further spotlight the glaring weaknesses in our country’s bizarre, anachronistic Electoral College system that have long been evident.
The record number of defections for the modern era — there hasn’t been more than one faithless elector in any one election in the past century — proves that the Electoral College isn’t a system that can be relied on to accurately reflect the will of voters in the states. And yet it also isn’t a system where electors feel completely free to make up their own minds.
Læs videre: http://www.vox.com/2016/12/19/14012970/electoral-college-faith-spotted-eagle-colin-powell