Faithless elector
In United States presidential elections, a faithless elector is a member of the United States Electoral College who does not vote for the presidential or vice presidential candidate for whom they had pledged to vote. That is, they break faith with the candidate they were pledged to and vote for another candidate, or fail to vote. A pledged elector is only considered a faithless elector by breaking their pledge; unpledged electors have no pledge to break.
Electors are typically chosen and nominated by a political party or the party's presidential nominee: they are usually party members with a reputation for high loyalty to the party and its chosen candidate. Thus, a faithless elector runs the risk of party censure and political retaliation from their party, as well as potential legal penalties in some states. Candidates for elector are nominated by state political parties in the months prior to Election Day. In some states, such as Indiana, the electors are nominated in primaries, the same way other candidates are nominated. In other states, such as Oklahoma, Virginia, and North Carolina, electors are nominated in party conventions. In Pennsylvania, the campaign committee of each candidate names their candidates for elector. In some states, high-ranking and/or well-known state officials up to and including governors often serve as electors whenever possible. The parties have generally been successful in keeping their electors faithful, leaving out the rare cases in which a candidate died before the elector was able to cast a vote.
There have been a total of 165 instances of faithlessness, 63 of which occurred in 1872 when Horace Greeley died after Election Day but before the Electoral College convened. Nearly all have voted for third party candidates or non-candidates, as opposed to switching their support to a major opposing candidate. During the 1836 election, Virginia's entire 23-man electoral delegation faithlessly abstained from voting for victorious Democratic vice presidential nominee Richard M. Johnson. The loss of Virginia's support caused Johnson to fall one electoral vote short of a majority, causing the vice presidential election to be thrown into the U.S. Senate for the only time in American history. The presidential election itself was not in dispute because Virginia's electors voted for Democratic presidential nominee Martin Van Buren as pledged. The U.S. Senate ultimately elected Johnson as vice president after a party-line vote.
The United States Constitution does not specify a notion of pledging; no federal law or constitutional statute binds an elector's vote to anything. All pledging laws originate at the state level; the U.S. Supreme Court upheld these state laws in its 1952 ruling Ray v. Blair. In 2020, the Supreme Court also ruled in Chiafalo v. Washington that states are free to enforce laws that bind electors to voting for the winner of the popular vote in their state.
Legal rulings
''Ray v. Blair''
The constitutionality of state pledge laws was confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1952 in Ray v. Blair in a 5–2 vote. The court ruled states have the right to require electors to pledge to vote for the candidate whom their party supports, and the right to remove potential electors who refuse to pledge prior to the election. The court also wrote:The ruling only held that requiring a pledge, not a vote, was constitutional and Justice Jackson, joined by Justice Douglas, wrote in his dissent:
One recent legal scholar believes "a state law that would thwart a federal elector’s discretion at an extraordinary time when it reasonably must be exercised would clearly violate Article II and the Twelfth Amendment".
''Chiafalo v. Washington'' and ''Colorado Department of State v. Baca''
, 33 states plus the District of Columbia have laws against faithless electors, though the laws in half of these jurisdictions have no enforcement mechanism. Washington became the first state to fine faithless electors after the 2016 election. In lieu of penalizing a faithless elector, some states such as Colorado, Michigan, and Minnesota specify a faithless elector's vote be voided. Colorado was the first state to void an elector's attempted faithless vote during the 2016 electoral college vote. Minnesota also invoked this law for the first time in 2016 when an elector pledged to Hillary Clinton attempted to vote for Bernie Sanders instead. Until 2008, Minnesota's electors cast secret ballots. Although the final count would reveal the occurrence of faithless votes, it was impossible to determine which elector were faithless. After an unknown elector was faithless in 2004, Minnesota amended its law to require public balloting of the electors' votes and invalidate any vote cast for someone other than the candidate to whom the elector was pledged.After the 2016 election, electors who attempted to switch their votes in Washington and Colorado were subjected to enforcement of their state's faithless elector laws. The electors received legal assistance from the non-profit advocacy group Equal Citizens founded by Lawrence Lessig. The Colorado case, Baca v. Colorado Department of State, was initially dismissed by the United States District Court for the District of Colorado. On appeal, the 10th Circuit ruled in August 2019 that Colorado's faithless elector law is unconstitutional. Specifically, the opinion held that electors have a constitutional right to vote for the presidential candidate of their choice and are not bound by any prior pledges they may have made. The opinion said the act of voting for president in the electoral college is a federal function not subject to state law and state laws requiring electors to vote only for the candidates they pledged are unconstitutional and unenforceable. On October 16, 2019, Colorado appealed the 10th Circuit's decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The decision conflicted with an earlier May 2019 decision by the Washington Supreme Court In re Guerra, in which three electors who had $1000 fines imposed on them for violating their pledges appealed the fines, which were upheld. In contrast to the Colorado case, the Washington court held that presidential electors are state officials under the control of state law and can be criminally punished by a state if they do not vote as they pledged. On October 7, 2019, these electors also appealed their case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
On July 6, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in both Chiafalo v. Washington and Colorado Department of State v. Baca that states may enforce laws to punish faithless electors.
History
Over 58 elections, 165 electors have not cast their votes for president or vice president as prescribed by the legislature of the state they represented. Of those:- 71 electors changed their votes because the candidate to whom they were pledged died before the electoral ballot.
- 1 elector chose to abstain from voting for any candidate.
- 93 were changed typically by the elector's personal preference, although there have been some instances where the change may have been caused by an honest mistake.
List of faithless electors
The following is a list of all faithless electors. The number preceding each entry is the number of faithless electors for the given year.2016
10 – 2016 election: In Washington, Democratic party electors gave three presidential votes to Colin Powell and one to Faith Spotted Eagle and these electors cast vice presidential votes for Elizabeth Warren, Maria Cantwell, Susan Collins, and Winona LaDuke. In Hawaii, Bernie Sanders received one presidential vote and Elizabeth Warren received one vice-presidential vote. In Texas, Christopher Suprun voted for John Kasich for President and another elector voted for Ron Paul, giving each one presidential vote. Suprun also voted for Carly Fiorina as vice-president while the other elector voted for Mike Pence as pledged.In addition, three other electors attempted to vote against their pledge, but had their votes invalidated. In Colorado, Kasich received one vote for president, which was invalidated. Two additional electors, one in Maine and one in Minnesota, cast votes for Sanders for president but had their votes invalidated; the elector in Maine was forced to cast a vote for Clinton, while the elector in Minnesota was replaced by one who cast a vote for Clinton. The same Minnesota elector voted for Tulsi Gabbard for vice president, but had that vote invalidated and given to Tim Kaine.
2000 to 2004
1 – 2004 election: An anonymous Minnesota elector, pledged for Democrats John Kerry and John Edwards, cast his or her presidential vote for, rather than Kerry, presumably by accident. Minnesota's electors cast secret ballots, so the identity of the faithless elector is not known. As a result of this incident, Minnesota statutes were amended to provide for public balloting of the electors' votes and invalidation of a vote cast for someone other than the candidate to whom the elector is pledged.
1 – 2000 election: Washington, D.C. elector Barbara Lett-Simmons, pledged for Democrats Al Gore and Joe Lieberman, cast no electoral votes as a protest of Washington D.C.'s lack of voting congressional representation. Lett-Simmons's electoral college abstention, the first since 1864, was intended to protest what Lett-Simmons referred to as the federal district's "colonial status". Lett-Simmons described her blank ballot as an act of civil disobedience, not an act of a faithless elector; Lett-Simmons supported Gore and would have voted for Gore if she had thought he had a chance to win.
1968 to 1996
1 – 1988 election: West Virginia Elector Margarette Leach, pledged for Democrats Michael Dukakis and Lloyd Bentsen, but as a form of protest against the winner-take-all custom of the Electoral College, instead cast her votes for the candidates in the reverse of their positions on the national ticket; her presidential vote went to Bentsen and her vice presidential vote to Dukakis.1 – 1976 election: Washington Elector Mike Padden, pledged for Republicans Gerald Ford and Bob Dole, cast his presidential electoral vote for Ronald Reagan, who had challenged Ford for the Republican nomination. He cast his vice presidential vote, as pledged, for Dole.
1 – 1972 election: Virginia Elector Roger MacBride, pledged for Republicans Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, cast his electoral votes for Libertarian candidates John Hospers and Tonie Nathan. MacBride's VP vote for Nathan was the first electoral vote cast for a woman in U.S. history.
1 – 1968 election: North Carolina Elector Lloyd W. Bailey, pledged for Republicans Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, cast his votes for American Independent Party candidates George Wallace and Curtis LeMay. Bailey later stated at a Senate hearing that he would have voted for Nixon and Agnew if his vote would have altered the outcome of the election.
1912 to 1960
1 – 1960 election: Oklahoma Elector Henry D. Irwin, pledged for Republicans Richard Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., contacted the other 218 Republican electors to convince them to cast presidential electoral votes for Democratic non-candidate Harry F. Byrd and vice presidential electoral votes for Republican Barry Goldwater, though most replied they had a moral obligation to vote for Nixon; Irwin voted for Byrd and Goldwater. Fourteen unpledged electors also voted for Byrd for president, but supported Strom Thurmond for vice president – since they were not pledged to anyone, their action was not faithless.1 – 1956 election: Alabama Elector W. F. Turner, pledged for Democrats Adlai Stevenson and Estes Kefauver, cast his votes for circuit judge Walter Burgwyn Jones and Herman Talmadge.
1 – 1948 election: Tennessee elector Preston Parks was on both the Democratic Party for Harry S. Truman and the States' Rights Democratic Party for Strom Thurmond. Parks actively campaigned for Thurmond. When the national Democratic Party slate won, he voted for Thurmond and Fielding L. Wright.
8 – 1912 election: Republican vice presidential candidate James S. Sherman died before the popular election. Nicholas M. Butler was hastily designated to receive the electoral votes that would have gone to Sherman. The Republicans only carried two states with eight electoral votes between them. All eight Republican electors voted for Butler for Vice President.
1872 to 1896
27 – 1896 election: The Democratic Party and the People's Party both ran William Jennings Bryan as their presidential candidate, but ran different candidates for Vice President: the Democratic Party nominated Arthur Sewall and the People’s Party nominated Thomas E. Watson. Although the Populist ticket did not win the popular vote in any state, 27 Democratic electors for Bryan cast their vice-presidential vote for Watson instead of Sewall.1 – 1892 election: The electors of Oregon were pledged to vote for Benjamin Harrison, with three electors doing so and one faithless elector voting for the third-party Populist candidate, James B. Weaver.
63 – 1872 election: Horace Greeley, the Liberal Republican/Democrat nominee for the November 5 election, died on November 29, before the electoral vote. 63 of the 66 electors pledged to Greeley declined to vote for a deceased candidate; 18 of them cast their presidential votes for Greeley's running mate, Benjamin Gratz Brown, and 45 cast their presidential votes for three non-candidates. The three posthumous presidential votes cast for Greeley were rejected by Congress.
1812 to 1840
1 – 1840 election: One elector from Virginia, Arthur Smith of Isle of Wight County, was pledged to vote for Democratic candidates Martin Van Buren and Richard M. Johnson. However, he voted for James K. Polk for Vice President.23 – 1836 election: The 23 electors from Virginia were pledged to vote for Democratic candidates Martin Van Buren and Richard M. Johnson. However, they abstained from voting for Johnson, because of his open liaison with a slave mistress. This left Johnson with one fewer than a majority of electoral votes. Johnson was subsequently elected Vice President by the Senate.
30 – 1832 election: All 30 electors from Pennsylvania refused to support the Democratic vice presidential candidate Martin Van Buren, voting instead for William Wilkins.
7 – 1828 election: Seven of nine electors from Georgia refused to vote for vice presidential candidate John C. Calhoun. All seven cast their vice presidential votes for William Smith instead.
1 – 1820 election: William Plumer was pledged to vote for Democratic-Republican candidate James Monroe, but he cast his vote for John Quincy Adams, who was not a candidate in the election. Some historians contend Plumer wanted George Washington to be the only unanimous selection and that he further wanted to draw attention to his friend Adams as a potential candidate. These claims are disputed.
3 – 1812 election: Three electors pledged to vote for Federalist vice presidential candidate Jared Ingersoll voted for Democratic-Republican Elbridge Gerry.
Before 1812
6 – 1808 election: Six electors from New York were pledged to vote for Democratic-Republican James Madison for President and former New York governor George Clinton for Vice President. Instead, they voted for Clinton to be President, with three voting for Madison for Vice President and the other three voting for James Monroe for Vice President.19 – 1796 election: Samuel Miles, an elector from Pennsylvania, was pledged to vote for Federalist presidential candidate John Adams, but voted for Democratic-Republican candidate Thomas Jefferson. He cast his other presidential vote as pledged for Thomas Pinckney; there was no provision at the time for specifying president or vice president. An additional 18 electors voted for Adams as pledged, but refused to vote for Pinckney. This was an attempt to foil Alexander Hamilton's rumored plan to elect Pinckney as President, and this resulted in the unintended outcome that Adams' opponent, Jefferson, was elected Vice President instead of Adams' running mate Pinckney. This was the only time in U.S. history that the president and vice president have been from different parties, except for 1864, and the only time the winners were from different tickets. After the 1800 election resulted in a deadlock, the Twelfth Amendment was ratified in 1804. It changed the election procedure so that instead of casting two votes of the same type, electors would make an explicit choice for president and vice president.