Electors almost always follow the vote in their state

Nick Ciggelakis, a 19-year-old elector from the DFW area, said his Facebook inbox has been inundated with people asking him to “vote his conscience”, or asking even more plainly to not vote for Trump. A number of electors told The Republic that they’ve been barraged with thousands of emails, phone calls and letters urging them to break that promise. If America were a monolithic federal state, there would be no need for the Electoral College.

That led to the Twelfth Amendment, requiring separate votes in the Electoral College for president and vice president.

Political parties select their electors, and it is fully expected that the electors will gather at their respective state capitals to cast their votes as pledged on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December.

The Electoral College system, which was championed by James Madison, the nation’s fourth president and one of the country’s Founding Fathers, is based on protecting slavery, according to numerous history scholars.

Republicans will file it under sour grapes, but even President-elect Donald Trump called the Electoral College a “disaster for democracy” in 2012 (he also maintains he could have won the popular vote if he needed to by campaigning more in heavily populated states, a very real possibility).

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For those more intelligently looking at the issue, striking the right balance between states and popular votes is a key factor. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., introduced a bill November 15 that would scrap the Electoral College and determine the victor of presidential elections by the outcome of the popular vote.

Libertarian Gary Johnson received 1.9 percent of the votes in Lackawanna County and 2.4 percent in the state of Pennsylvania. Gore received more popular votes but acceded graciously to the victor in the Electoral College.

The Electoral College was originally established to prevent uneducated citizens of the time from deciding the outcome of the election – many people today now say the Electoral College is “outdated”.

Following the November 8 election, Change.org launched an online petition drive to persuade electors to cast their ballots for Mrs. Clinton – because she won the popular vote. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote on Election Day. Denizens of “fly-over” territory might harbor continuing irritation over their inability to elect a president despite generating huge popular vote majorities. In contrast, the Electoral College guarantees that the president has won with the majority of “votes”.

In April of 2016, Mr. Trump has also stated that “our republican system is absolutely rigged” at a campaign event in upstate NY. But he won, not just sufficient states to win the Electoral College, but most of the states. Wyoming has a population of roughly one-half million and three electoral votes. The candidate to reach 270 ascends to the presidency. I see now that Trump’s victory should have been clear in July. The effect on voting participation is substantial: last week in 14 states where the margin was close, 65 percent of eligible voters cast ballots, a 16 percent higher turnout than in the rest of the nation.

“One of my legal colleagues suggests that the joint session is the “break glass in case of emergency” – it’s the last line of defense against an election that may have been corrupted in some way”, Neale said. Calculating the popular vote entails adding up final tallies from all the states and territories, which organise their own elections. Pakistan is another. Many countries have direct elections, while others such as the United Kingdom have monarchs as heads of state, directly electing their legislature or parliament.