Faithless elector
Candidates for electors are nominated by state political parties in the months prior to Election Day.
[2] In other states, such as Oklahoma, Virginia, and North Carolina, electors are nominated in party conventions.
Uniquely, Richard Nixon always had a faithless elector in one of his state slates during his three runs for President.
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.
In 2019, the state changed its law for future elections, to void faithless votes and replace the respective electors instead of fining them.
[11] The constitutionality of state pledge laws was confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1952 in Ray v. Blair[12] in a 5–2 vote.
II, § 1, to vote as he may choose [emphasis added] in the electoral college, it would not follow that the requirement of a pledge in the primary is unconstitutional.
The ruling held only that requiring a pledge, not a vote, was constitutional and Justice Jackson, joined by Justice Douglas, wrote in his dissent:[12] No one faithful to our history can deny that the plan originally contemplated what is implicit in its text – that electors would be free agents, to exercise an independent and nonpartisan judgment as to the men best qualified for the Nation's highest offices.In 2015, one legal scholar opined that "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".
[14] The electors received legal assistance from the non-profit advocacy group Equal Citizens founded by Lawrence Lessig.
On appeal, the 10th Circuit ruled in August 2019 that Colorado's faithless elector law is unconstitutional.
[15] 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.
[23] 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.
The 1800 election resulted in a deadlock, as there were no faithless Democratic-Republican electors: they all voted for both Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, forcing the tied decision to the House of Representatives.
[24] Plumer also cast his vice-presidential vote for Richard Rush, not Daniel D. Tompkins as pledged.
[28][29][30][31] 66 – 1872 election: Horace Greeley, the Liberal Republican/Democrat presidential nominee, died on November 29 shortly before the Electoral College vote in December.
The Republicans had won only two states, Utah and Vermont, and Nicholas M. Butler was hastily designated to receive the eight electoral votes that were pledged to Sherman.
[24] 1 – 1956 election: Alabama Elector W. F. Turner, pledged for Democrats Adlai Stevenson and Estes Kefauver, cast his votes for Judge Walter Burgwyn Jones and Herman Talmadge, the former Governor of Georgia.
[24] 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.
[35] 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.
[37] 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.
[38] Lett-Simmons described her blank ballot as an act of civil disobedience, not an act of a faithless elector; Lett-Simmons supported Gore and Lieberman and would have voted for Gore and Lieberman if she had thought they had a chance to win.
