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With Donald Trump breaking through the 270 Electoral College vote victory threshold to be declared president-elect on Tuesday, the next stage of the process is the result’s confirmation by each state’s electors.
Appointed electors meet to vote for the president and vice president of the US. But what if they rebel?
Have electors ever voted for another candidate?
Yes: A «faithless elector» is one who votes for someone other than the candidate chosen by their state’s citizens, or abstains from voting.
There have been 157 faithless electors in US history who went against the will of their states’ voters. Of that group, 71 electors could not pick a candidate because he had died between election day and when the Electoral College convened.
The first faithless elector was Samuel Miles from Pennsylvania who cast his vote in 1796 for Thomas Jefferson, even though his state’s choice was John Adams.
Most recently in the 2016 election seven electors refused to vote for the candidate favoured by voters: two refused to vote for Republican candidate Donald Trump and five rejected Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Could Presidential Electors Change the Outcome of Race?
No: On July 6, 2020, the US Supreme Court ruled that «a state may enforce an elector’s pledge to support his party’s nominee – and the state voters’ choice – for President,” and that “electors are not free agents; they are to vote for the candidate whom the State’s voters have chosen.»
Have Faithless Electors Ever Changed the Outcome of Election?
In every previous case the number of rebels has been too small to influence the outcome of the presidential election.
The National Constitution Center describes two cases in which faithless electors nearly changed the vice-presidential result:
After the 1832 election, 30 electors pledged for Martin Van Buren changed their minds, but he was still elected.
Richard Mentor Johnson was almost denied the second-highest office by a mass rebellion of electors in 1836, but he was appointed by the Senate under 12th Amendment rules.
