With everyone talking about petitions to have electors vote against their state's decision I decide to look up the facts/chances of that happening. Here are my take a ways and the article (which is great) I read:
When a member of the Electoral College votes against what their state decides they are called a Faithless Elector- a fun fact I probably learned when I was about 13 and have long since forgotten. Now that we got the terminology out of the way let's dive into facts.
Faithless Electors have never changed the outcome of the election. However, the most interesting case was in 1836 when all electors from Virginia abstained from voting, leaving neither candidate with the majority. In this case, the Senate votes for who should be president. Their abstaining meant little as Johnson was still elected,but the camaraderie is admirable.
(3.)
As you may have noticed from point #2, abstaining or defecting as a group was much more common when the nation was still young. It seems singleton votes are more likely now.
The singleton votes are more likely (in modern presidency) to go to 3rd party nominees. in 1968, George Wallace of the American Independence Party received a total of 46 electoral votes. The largest number of votes a third party member has ever received (second of course, is the famous Strom Thurmond receiving 3% of the popular vote and 39 electoral votes when the Democratic Party split into States Rights Party and refused to vote for Harry Truman.
If anything happened this election it would be both historic and monumental. As nothing happened in the 2000 election where Gore won the populist vote by a greater margin than Clinton won here (apx. 500,000 and 400,000 respectively). One could also say if singleton voters are most likely (#4), it seems impossible to make up a 50+ electoral vote deficit. I suspect nothing will happen here. I'm really not trying to make a political statement either. Just sharing some fun facts I stumbled onto while researching this petition. In actuality, I suggest reading the article I linked and letting me know what your takeaways are. Happy Friday everyone!
