Faithless Electors

[_subgenius]

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that states are free to remove and punish presidential electors who break with their pledges to support designated candidates.
...
In 2016, seven of the 535 electors cast votes at odds with the popular-vote winners and three attempted to do so. Most of the faithless electors were part of an unsuccessful attempt to seek out a moderate, more conventional presidential contender who could deny Donald Trump the presidency.

#winning?

Anyone believe Supreme Court made the right decision here?

[_honorentheos]

I think it's right. And one of the very few times I agree to a large degree with Justice Thomas's position.

[_MeDotOrg]

I think the issue brings into focus some of the absurdities about the electoral college. Wasn't one of the original reasons for having an electoral college was to put a buffer in between the popular vote and the election of the President? Isn't that precisely what a faithless elector does?

The electoral college is on its way to losing accreditation.

[_EAllusion]

The two reasons for electors rather than electoral votes was to manage the logistics of the Presidential selection in a horse and buggy culture and for electors to exercise judgment independent of popular voting as a counter-majoritarian check against demagoguery. The former is obsolete and the latter is a dead letter.

[_honorentheos]

From the records of the Philadelphia Convention:

T]he members of the General Convention...did indulge the hope [that] by apportioning, limiting, and confining the Electors within their respective States, and by the guarded manner of giving and transmitting the ballots of the Electors to the Seat of Government, that intrigue, combination, and corruption, would be effectually shut out, and a free and pure election of the president of the United States made perpetual.

If you look at Federalist 68, the concern is with corruption of the Republican method of representation. And the main source of corruption of concern was that foreign influencers would be able to gain control of the executive. So in a sense, yes. The electoral college was intended to be a fire break. But it is as intended to protect against particular types of problems that the very existance of parties kinda breaks. For example, it was supposed to prevent a cabal in the legislature electing "their guy" to tip the balance between branches of government such that divided government became a farce. That's essentially what party politics does. But it was also intended to mitigate the very real fear of the time of pure democracies being a step above anarchy.

If you take the three main paragraphs after the intro I think you get a good sense of the balance it was intended to strike:

1) "the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided."

2) "the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station"

3) "It (is) peculiarly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder."

The 12th amendment fixed a problem with the electors casting two votes for whomever and the 2nd place finisher becoming vice-president to then having the electoral college vote separately for both. Another of the many changes that suggest intention and practise were a process rather than a divine edict of how to form a government.

In so many ways the electors represent good intentions that, due to human nature, can't be perfectly realized. Maybe the electoral college is broken. But I'm skeptical a purely democratic election would be better. Trump represents a deeper problem that isn't fixed by abandoning the electoral college. Had the electoral college interfered in 2016 it would not have helped the Republic, and probably sent us into chaos.

Regardless, in the case decided today, the question was rightly decided unanimously.

[_EAllusion]

The concept of electoral votes can be separated from having human electors. Human electors no longer function as people with sound independent judgment and really haven't for quite some time. They arguably never functioned that way. Their existence doesn't "strike a balance" between anything because the system doesn't work even approximately as intended. Human electors do not act as a check against "pure democracy" because the human electors are picked for their capacity to not exercise independent judgment and are bound by cultural norms legal ramifications to act accordingly. This Supreme Court decision just further solidifies something that already was rock solid. There is zero chance an electoral college would overturn the on-paper electoral victory outcome. And the nation would descend into absolute chaos if it did.

The electoral college's apportionment system - giving small states increasingly unequal weight in deciding the presidency - is a separate issue with it's own set of problems, but it's distinct from whether the electoral votes should be represented by flesh and blood people who cast a vote.

The other part of the argument for having human electors, referenced above, was just to manage the difficulty of having a secure, trustworthy election in a society that lacked any kind of rapid communication technology. Putting a relatively small group of people in a room and having them decide was a solution to that problem. We no longer need that solution.

[_subgenius]

I think the issue brings into focus some of the absurdities about the electoral college. Wasn't one of the original reasons for having an electoral college was to put a buffer in between the popular vote and the election of the President? Isn't that precisely what a faithless elector does?

The electoral college is on its way to losing accreditation.

Can you provide insight and cite one of these "original reasons" ?

[_subgenius]

The concept of electoral votes can be separated from having human electors. Human electors no longer function as people with sound independent judgment and really haven't for quite some time. They arguably never functioned that way. Their existence doesn't "strike a balance" between anything because the system doesn't work even approximately as intended. Human electors do not act as a check against "pure democracy" because the human electors are picked for their capacity to not exercise independent judgment and are bound by cultural norms legal ramifications to act accordingly. This Supreme Court decision just further solidifies something that already was rock solid. There is zero chance an electoral college would overturn the on-paper electoral victory outcome. And the nation would descend into absolute chaos if it did.

The electoral college's apportionment system - giving small states increasingly unequal weight in deciding the presidency - is a separate issue with it's own set of problems, but it's distinct from whether the electoral votes should be represented by flesh and blood people who cast a vote.

The other part of the argument for having human electors, referenced above, was just to manage the difficulty of having a secure, trustworthy election in a society that lacked any kind of rapid communication technology. Putting a relatively small group of people in a room and having them decide was a solution to that problem. We no longer need that solution.

Arent electors themselves elected?
Nevertheless, since our nation and government are founded and function on the principles of State autonomy (to a significant extent), is it not reasonable that population variations are mitigated by the electoral college? The most inept idea for liberty would be a popular vote for President. States elect the president, and that's a pretty simple cocnept that has been extremely successful.

[_EAllusion]

The concept of electoral votes can be separated from having human electors. Human electors no longer function as people with sound independent judgment and really haven't for quite some time. They arguably never functioned that way. Their existence doesn't "strike a balance" between anything because the system doesn't work even approximately as intended. Human electors do not act as a check against "pure democracy" because the human electors are picked for their capacity to not exercise independent judgment and are bound by cultural norms legal ramifications to act accordingly. This Supreme Court decision just further solidifies something that already was rock solid. There is zero chance an electoral college would overturn the on-paper electoral victory outcome. And the nation would descend into absolute chaos if it did.

The electoral college's apportionment system - giving small states increasingly unequal weight in deciding the presidency - is a separate issue with it's own set of problems, but it's distinct from whether the electoral votes should be represented by flesh and blood people who cast a vote.

The other part of the argument for having human electors, referenced above, was just to manage the difficulty of having a secure, trustworthy election in a society that lacked any kind of rapid communication technology. Putting a relatively small group of people in a room and having them decide was a solution to that problem. We no longer need that solution.

aren't electors themselves elected?
Nevertheless, since our nation and government are founded and function on the principles of State autonomy (to a significant extent), is it not reasonable that population variations are mitigated by the electoral college? The most inept idea for liberty would be a popular vote for President. States elect the president, and that's a pretty simple cocnept that has been extremely successful.

Every single time the electoral college contravened the popular vote, it's been bad for the country, so I'm not so sure about the assertion that it's worked out great.

But that's not the full picture here. Let's set aside the federalism based argument for a second. The relative power small states have had in deciding the President hasn't stayed the same over time. It's a function of the ratio of Senators to House members. The fewer House seats, the more power lower population states have. The more House seats, the more the electoral college resembles population distribution. If there were only 200 Congressional Representatives, Wyoming's relative power would be even larger than it is now. If there were 10,000, the electoral college would not distort the weight of a Wyoming citizen's vote as much.

Congress was designed to grow as the population did. And, until a little less than a century ago, it did, though it didn't keep pace with population growth. Then the practice was just stopped dead in its tracks and the current number has ossified as a cultural norm based on the apportionment acts of 1911 and 1929. Because of this, with each passing day a citizen of Wyoming's vote for President counts more and more than a citizen of Texas's does. To bring it back to the citizen to Representative ratio design of 1790's, you'd need about 9200 House seats. While there's a reasonable case that's appropriate, it's also pie in the sky not gonna happen. How *much* federalism there is keeps changing and it is drifting more and more away from the original agreement.

So the question isn't simply should individual states have different weighting in their say in the Presidency to represent state interests in the federal design of the government, but should states have an ever widening gap in how much influence they have? I have a hard time seeing how the answer can be yes to the second question.

[_EAllusion]

The Connecticut compromise that the electoral college is subsequently dependent on also directly led to the civil war, so it's hard to declare that all sunshine and rainbows.