Yesterday I wrote a diary here, Presidential Electors: Trump you pledged to vote for has blown his cover It was styled as addressed to Trump Electors, based on their being constitutionally protected in voting their conscience rather than their pledge. I decided to check Wikipedia for some details, and this procedure which is composed of the Constitutional Provision, Federal Law, and the laws of the fifty states, is complex to say the least.
While it is an extreme long shot to get the score or so of Electors who are Pledged to Trump to change to Hillary, and the Trump forces would not go down quietly, meaning I hope fight it only in the courts, with each of Trumps crony appointments the disaster that he represents becomes harder to ignore.
I did notice on the Wikipedia article “Electoral College United States” Under Contents 3.2 Electors and then down several pages you reach the following:
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Faithlessness
A faithless elector is one who casts an electoral vote for someone other than the candidate of the party that they pledged to vote for or does not vote for anyone. Twenty-nine states plus the District of Columbia have laws to punish faithless electors. In 1952, the constitutionality of state pledge laws was brought before the Supreme Court in Ray v. Blair, 343 U.S. 214 (1952). The Court ruled in favor of state laws requiring electors to pledge to vote for the winning candidate, as well as removing electors who refuse to pledge. As stated in the ruling, electors are acting as a functionary of the state, not the federal government. Therefore, states have the right to govern electors. The constitutionality of state laws punishing electors for actually casting a faithless vote, rather than refusing to pledge, has never been decided by the Supreme Court. While many only punish a faithless elector after the fact, states like Michigan also specify a faithless elector's vote be voided.[53]
As electoral slates are typically chosen by the political party or the party's presidential nominee, electors usually have high loyalty to the party and its candidate: a faithless elector runs a greater risk of party censure than criminal charges.
Faithless electors have not changed the outcome of any presidential election to date. For example, in 2000 elector Barbara Lett-Simmons of Washington, D.C. chose not to vote, rather than voting for Al Gore as she had pledged to do. This was done as an act of protest against Washington, D.C.'s lack of congressional voting representation.[54] Barbara Lett-Simmons's abstention did not change who won that year's presidential election, as George W. Bush received a majority (271) of the electoral votes.
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You will notice that the above does not make the point as clearly as my version below of the important current issue of whether Electors may change their vote from the candidate they pledged to. I have put my main change in italics, which is already in the sub-article on Faithless Electors. My contention is that it should be in included in the main article. I expected that my version would be, and it has been reverted, without without comment.
I want to get feedback from this Dailykos audience as to whether they support my effort to continue contest this, which I will do by reverting and also writing on the talk page. I have done this successfully before, one time reaching common ground on the issue of “hate speech laws” in the United States. The previous issues were more general and I don’t expect any meeting of the minds here, as the Trump forces do not want to let it be known that Elector’s discretion is protected by the Constitution, and this has never been challenged much less reversed.
Faithlessness
A faithless elector is the term commonly used for one who casts an electoral vote for someone other than the candidate of the party that they pledged to vote for or does not vote for anyone. Twenty-nine states plus the District of Columbia have laws to punish faithless electors. In 1952, the constitutionality of state pledge laws was brought before the Supreme Court in Ray v. Blair, 343 U.S. 214 (1952). The Court ruled in favor of state laws requiring electors to pledge to vote for the winning candidate, as well as removing electors who refuse to pledge. As stated in the ruling, electors are acting as a functionary of the state, not the federal government therefore, states have the right to govern this aspect of electors.
The constitutionality of state laws punishing electors for actually casting a faithless vote contrary to their pledge, rather than refusing to pledge, has never explicitly been decided by the Supreme Court. Justice Robert Jackson wrote in his dissent in Ray v. Blair, "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." More recent legal scholars believe "a state law that would thwart a federal elector’s discretion would clearly violate Article II and the Twelfth Amendment."[7]
While many states have laws punishing a faithless elector after the fact, some states such as Michigan, in defiance of the Constitutional intent, also specify a faithless elector's vote be voided.[52]
As electoral slates are typically chosen by the political party or the party's presidential nominee, electors usually have high loyalty to the party and its candidate: a faithless elector runs a greater risk of party censure than criminal charges.
Faithless electors have not changed the outcome of any presidential election to date. For example, in 2000 elector Barbara Lett-Simmons of Washington, D.C. chose not to vote, rather than voting for Al Gore as she had pledged to do. This was done as an act of protest against Washington, D.C.'s lack of congressional voting representation.[53] Barbara Lett-Simmons's abstention did not change who won that year's presidential election, as George W. Bush received a majority (271) of the electoral votes.