Jul 06, 2020 · Lawrence Lessig, one of the attorneys who argued the electors should not have been bound to vote for Clinton, said the ruling removed “one …
Jul 07, 2020 · Lawrence Lessig, one of the attorneys who argued the electors should not have been bound to vote for Clinton, said the ruling removed "one uncertainty about the Electoral College." A group he represents, Equal Citizen, will begin discussions to identify fixes to the system that a majority of Americans can support, he said.
May 13, 2020 · Lawrence Lessig, an attorney representing three Washington state presidential electors, speaks Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2019, during a Washington Supreme Court hearing in Olympia, Wash., on a lawsuit...
Jul 06, 2020 · Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor and activist who represented the electors, said he was disappointed in the decision, adding that it eliminated some uncertainty around the nation's process...
As a result of the seven successfully cast faithless votes, the Democratic Party nominee, Hillary Clinton, lost five of her pledged electors while the Republican Party nominee and then president-elect, Donald Trump, lost two.
On July 6, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in both Chiafalo v. Washington and Colorado Department of State v. Baca that states may enforce laws to punish faithless electors.
Washington, 591 U.S. ___ (2020), was a United States Supreme Court case on the issue of "faithless electors" in the Electoral College stemming from the 2016 United States presidential election. The Court ruled unanimously that states have the ability to enforce an elector's pledge in presidential elections.
Art. II, § 1). Many states have enacted so-called “faithless elector” laws, which are laws that are intended to ensure that electors vote for candidates belonging to the political party that nominated them. Over 30 states, including Connecticut, and Washington D.C. have faithless elector laws.Jan 11, 2021
If no candidate receives a majority of electoral votes, the Presidential election leaves the Electoral College process and moves to Congress. The House of Representatives elects the President from the 3 Presidential candidates who received the most electoral votes.
All states currently choose presidential electors by popular vote. As of 2020, eight states name the electors on the ballot. Mostly, the "short ballot" is used; the short ballot displays the names of the candidates for president and vice president, rather than the names of prospective electors.
In the modern era, faithless electors are rarer still, and have never determined the outcome of a presidential election. There has been one faithless elector in each of the following elections: 1948, 1956, 1960, 1968, 1972, 1976, and 1988. A blank ballot was cast in 2000.
On July 6, 2020, the Supreme Court unanimously held that states may punish or replace presidential electors who refuse to cast their ballots for the candidate chosen by the voters of their state.Jul 10, 2020
When people cast their vote, they are actually voting for a group of people called electors. The number of electors each state gets is equal to its total number of Senators and Representatives in Congress. A total of 538 electors form the Electoral College. Each elector casts one vote following the general election.
It is rare for electors to disregard the popular vote by casting their electoral vote for someone other than their party's candidate. Electors generally hold a leadership position in their party or were chosen to recognize years of loyal service to the party.
The State legislature designates where in the State the meeting will take place, usually in the State capital. At this meeting, the electors cast their votes for President and Vice President.
Lessig described a constant "back-and-forth" of editing drafts of briefs with his co-counsel, "tinkering" with the specific language, and then eventually sharing the drafts with other lawyers who reply with notes. Not part of a state attorney general's office or a high-powered law firm, Lessig enlists the law students he teaches to assist with research projects on specific issues.
Michael Baca and Bret Chiafalo, two of the highest-profile electors involved in the litigation, were Bernie Sanders supporters in the 2016 Democratic caucuses in Colorado and Washington, respectively. Both were politically active but had other jobs. Baca at the time worked at Jamba Juice and is now a teacher, while Chiafalo is a tech worker.
Preparing for oral arguments is also a difficult task, Lessig said, because lawyers making the arguments have to "compensate" for the fact they know the case better than anyone else. While the Supreme Court justices don't exactly need things dumbed down for them, Lessig said it's important for counsel to "make it understandable... to people who've not spent the last four years of their life deep in the bowels of the history of the 12th Amendment."
Equal Citizens is one of many nonprofits that take up cases brought by people in federal or state court and work to get a ruling on the issue in the Supreme Court. Lessig's Equal Citizens is largely nonpolitical, but there are other such groups on the left and right that generally don't charge legal fees.
With Supreme Court litigation comes heavy workloads for the lawyers preparing the cases. Lessig said that though he doesn't count the hours he puts into writing briefs and preparing for oral arguments, the work amounts to "endless time."
Samuel Miles , of Pennsylvania, was the first elector to break a pledge to vote for a specific candidate. Miles had promised to vote for Federalist candidate John Adams, but instead cast a ballot for Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson.
Barbara Lett-Simmons, a Democratic elector from the District of Columbia, did not cast her vote in order to protest the lack of congressional representation for Washington , DC. Lett-Simmons was the first elector to abstain from voting since 1832. Her abstention did not affect the outcome of the election.
When a presidential candidate wins a state in the presidential election, it means that electors chosen by their political party will vote for president and vice president. Overwhelmingly, these electors have faithfully voted for their party’s presidential nominee. However, occasionally they do not. Electors who cast a vote for someone other than their party’s nominee are often called “faithless electors.”
Thurmond, who gathered less than 3% of the popular vote, received a total of 39 electoral votes. The other 38 electors were not faithless electors, but were earned by virtue of Thurmond winning Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina.
The Democratic electors were David Bright (ME - Bernie Sanders), Muhammad Abdurrahman (MN - Bernie Sanders), Micheal Baca (CO - John Kasich), Esther John (WA - Colin Powell), Levi Guerra (WA - Colin Powell), Bret Chiafalo (WA - Colin Powell), Robert Satiacum (WA - Faith Spotted Eagle), and David Mulinix (HI - Bernie Sanders). The two Republican electors were Chris Suprun (TX - John Kasich) and Bill Greene (TX - Ron Paul). Additionally, one Texas Republican elector, Art Sisneros, withdrew after Election Day but prior to the vote of the electors and was replaced. Seven of these electors also voted for a different candidate for vice president than their party’s nominee.
Preston Parks was a member of Tennessee’s Democratic Party . He was appointed as one of their state electors early in the election year. Before the election, members of the Democratic Party split off and formed the States Rights party.
2004 - Anonymous (Democrat, Minnesota) An unknown elector from Minnesota, pledged to vote for Democrat John Kerry, cast a presidential vote instead for Kerry’s running mate John Edwards (the elector also cast his or her vice presidential vote for Edwards).
Now it's before the Supreme Court. Micheal Baca casts his vote for vice president on his pen box after he was replaced by Celeste Landry of Boulder (right of Baca) as a member of the Electoral College from Colorado at the state Capitol in Denver on Dec. 19, 2016.
Weeks after the 2016 election, Micheal Baca, then a member of the Electoral College in Colorado, tried to cast his presidential ballot for Ohio Gov. John Kasich , a Republican even though Democrat Hillary Clinton won the state's popular vote over Donald Trump.
The Electoral College is made up of 538 delegates . The total number of electors represents the total number of U.S. senators, 100 (two per state); the total number of state representatives, 435; and three more electors for the District of Columbia. Each state has a number of electoral votes equal to the combined total of its congressional ...
Eight were Democratic electors – from Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Minnesota and Washington – and two were Republican electors, both from Texas. More than 4.5 million people signed a petition advocating for electors to have a change of heart.
There were an unusually high number of faithless electors in 2016. That year, Donald Trump won with 304 electoral votes. It was the fifth time in American history that the winner of the presidential election lost the popular vote.