They just had a big court case about this, Chiafolo v. Washington, about faithless electors in the 2016 election Democratic electors who wanted to protest-vote against Hillary and for John Kasich or Colin Powell for some godforsaken reason
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According to what I'm reading, they wanted to protest that the 12th Amendment of the Constitution implicitly grants electors the right to vote any way they want and charging a monetary fine for faithless voting is a violation of their constitutional privilege
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Lawrence Lessig, who wants to officially abolish the Electoral College, sponsored their court case as a chess move to eliminate the pledged-elector system and just honestly have a true popular vote It didn't work though
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SCOTUS ruled unanimously that state governments enforcing pledged electors via monetary fines is totally constitutional, and I guess implicitly thinks this is good enough for keeping presidential elections democratic
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Like, the electors could all meet in a room and just randomly decide they want Kanye West to be the President, and they could theoretically do it, and maybe they'd all lose their houses and even go to prison afterwards, but constitutionally we'd still have President Kanye West
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That's kind of fucked up I guess it matters what the states mean that say you are "required" to take the faithless vote back really mean by "required" What if you just put your hands behind your back and say you're absolutely not changing it
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Yeah - the resolution seems to be that you have violated your oath and therefore, vacated your office as an elector, and an alternate gets seated. I don't know how many alternates there are.
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Actually I could be wrong but I don't think the Electoral College even has alternates *Delegates*, who are the equivalent of electors for the party's own nominating convention, have alternates, who can be removed for that reason But I've never heard of it for electors
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Replying to @arthur_affect @mssilverstein and
That's the whole thing, the Electoral College is a constitutionally-mandated body and to "impeach" a member of the EC would require you following a process allowed by the Constitution itself; no such process was ever written into it Perils of relying on a 200-year-old document
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Replying to @arthur_affect @mssilverstein and
Ah, okay, I'm wrong, there is a law that enables faithless electors to get recalled, on the basis that the 12th Amendment says the EC is ultimately appointed by the state legislature so the state legislature can pass laws about how they are seated
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The one guy from Maine who tried to vote for Bernie Sanders in 2016 was officially removed and replaced by an alternate Other people who voted faithlessly were "forced to change their vote" (which I guess they ultimately consented to) Others had the vote stand but were fined
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Replying to @arthur_affect @mssilverstein and
It's the state by state inconsistency over what is honestly a really big constitutional loophole that's so concerning
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Yeah - I mean, it's a kludge on top of a system that is long since obsolete (and probably was by 1796), but never actually replaced. I mean, legislatures could also just pick their own electors.
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