Steve3007:
As I understand it, a member of the electoral college who refuses to vote for the candidate who won most of the votes in that state is called a "faithless elector". And apparently that has been known to happen, but is exceptional.
Right. There were a record number of faithless electors in this election - seven. Only two voted against Trump. According to interviews, of the five Democrats, their votes were not only in opposition to Clinton but to the current electoral system.
cbsnews.com/news/which-candidates-did-t ... tion-2016/
http://www.hamiltonelectors.com/
I also understand that these electors are usually loyal party members. So I guess they are politicians.
Some are some are not. They are party faithful and typically active in politics, but not necessarily politicians in the sense of holding or running for office.
As far as I can see, the key difference between this system and the system in which party leaders are chosen by congressmen/MPs is that the electoral college was originally put in place as a way to stop party leaders being elected for factional, intra-party reasons - backroom deals - and to ensure that the leader is simply the choice of the people.
What needs to be understood is the system has undergone several changes. The general intent of the system is to maintain a balance of power, but Alexander Hamilton had deep concerns regarding the wisdom of the masses to do what was in their own best interest. The electoral college as he conceived of it would be a deliberative body. The anti-federalists questioned whether the interests of the people would be represented by such a body. The history of the electoral college has been a series of attempts to fix problems in the system as they emerge. It is a patchwork.
If I've got this right, then actually these electors don't really seem to serve much purpose except as simple communicators of the will of the people of their state. They're just messengers. Is that right, or am I missing something?
That is correct in part. But, given the historic number of electors who did not vote for the party candidate it may be that electors will once again be more than just messengers.
According to my brief research this has only happened twice in the last 100 years or so and in both cases the winner of the popular vote and loser of the electoral college vote was a Democrat (Al Gore and Hilary Clinton).
In 1824 Andrew Jackson won the popular vote but got less than 50 percent of the electoral votes. John Quincy Adams became the next president when he was picked by the House of Representatives.
In 1876 Samuel Tilden won the popular vote but lost the election when Rutherford B. Hayes got 185 electoral votes to Tilden’s 184.
In 1888 Grover Cleveland won the popular vote but lost the election when Benjamin Harrison got 233 electoral votes to Cleveland’s 168.
In 2000 Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the election to George Bush. In the most highly contested election in modern history, the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the Florida recount of ballots, giving Bush the state’s 25 electoral votes for a total of 271 to Gore’s 255.
history.com/topics/us-presidents/presid ... tion-facts
So I suppose people who feel like it can still speculate that the debate about eliminating the electoral college was motivated by a desire on the part of the Democratic party, and their sinister global elite overlords, to subvert democracy, and by them being sore losers?
Yup, but those who make such arguments would quickly change their tune if the shoe were on the other foot. More importantly, not all politics is party politics. There are some who are debating the issue in other terms.
Dolphin42:
Trump has now said that if Mexico refuses to pay for the wall, the Mexican leader should cancel a planned visit to Washington.
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto cancelled.
… surely the wall is going to have to be 60,000 feet tall?
He did say it would be bigly.
Trump’s interview yesterday with ABC News was a bizarre, falsehood filled, self-promoting, self-aggrandizing, bit of political theater that was both funny and deeply troubling. Opinions are split as to whether he is profoundly inept or has brought a new skill to politics. Some see it as an an inability to see beyond his obsession with his own popularity, but others see all this as just noise deliberately intended to distract us from what he is doing.
The Washington Post had this to say about Trump’s ABC News interview:
washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/w ... 3c5345a214
In an editorial in the Washington Post entitled “Don’t get distracted by Trump’s ‘dead cats’” his diversionary tactics are discussed:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2017/01/25/ ... adca1f0386
Of particular concern:
The Environmental Protection Agency, the Agriculture Department, the Interior Department and the Department of Health and Human Services all reported various new edicts restricting federal agencies’ use of social media, appearances in public events or contacts with the press or lawmakers. It was an authoritarian gesture that, in an ordinary time, would dominate the news.
His administration froze all EPA grants and contracts, and it ordered the EPA to take down its climate-change Web page, thereby removing links to data on global warming.