POLS 1150 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Presidential Succession Act
21 Oct 2016
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Most elections aren"t all that close in the electoral college, so if there are one or two faithless electors, it doesn"t really matter. But, in the case of a very close vote (e. g. , 2000) and one candidate just barely wins, theoretically a faithless elector could change the outcome; but, in reality, they almost certainly cannot. Up to the 2012 election, over 23,000 votes have been cast in the electoral college and only 157 faithless votes have been cast over that time (0. 7% of the time) Almost all of the faithless votes were changed from votes that have been pledged to a candidate that had already lost (they couldn"t change the outcome with their pledged vote because their candidate was defeated regardless) This elector lived in dc, and decided to do this to send a message to the. American public that it was unfair that dc doesn"t have the same rights that the states do.
