Talk:Faithless elector

My recent edit to the page was reverted. See below for original text. Yes, I understand that the official electoral vote from Minnesota will not reflect the faithless elector but there still needs to be a way to note this on the page, otherwise Minnesota will never show faithless electors again under the post-2004 state law which immediately replaces faithless electors...

Original edit: 1 – 2016 election: Muhammed Abdurrahman, a Minnesota elector, pledged for Democrats Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine, cast his ballot for Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard^[1][2][3]. Under state law passed after the 2004 faithless elector incident the Secretary of State invalidated the ballot and a backup elector was called who then cast votes for Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine.

Maybe we can say 0 - followed by the information? There should be some way to indicate the controversy here...

BenFranske (talk) 20:05, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

I have restored the content but provided a separate count for faithless electors who were not counted. – Smyth\^talk 21:11, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

User:Mélencron reverted again saying "this isn't a list of things that didn't happen (attempts to defect in other states stamped out)". What attempts? This isn't the same as someone considering being faithless and then deciding not to. This is an actual faithless vote. He has to be included in the list, even if he was replaced. – Smyth\^talk 21:39, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

The vote was not counted and the elector was replaced by one who voted in accordance with their state's vote. Mélencron (talk) 21:50, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

@Mélencron: Whether he was replaced or counted is irrelevant. He was an elector. He was faithless. So he should be included in the "list of faithless electors". – Smyth\^talk 22:02, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Keyword here being "was". It wasn't counted and he was replaced. This article lists only successful defections (i.e., those which were successfully cast; no failed attempts thrown out or replaced). Mélencron (talk) 22:38, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

@Mélencron: Why does it have to be that way? The article spends much space discussing various laws against faithless electors, so it's logical to include in the timeline an incident in which those laws were actually used. – Smyth\^talk 22:54, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

The 2016 entry should be two entries, as there were only 6 faithless electors for vice president. GoodDay (talk) 04:27, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Someone has now reorganized the section in what I think is a clearer way. – Smyth\^talk 12:50, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

And I have reorganized it again to place the focus on the electors (the topic of this article) rather than the candidates. – Smyth\^talk 13:08, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

It makes zero sense to list the number of faithless electors of 2016 as 7 rather than 10. As long as the article mentions that these faithless had their votes invalidated and overturned, it is accurate. There are current court cases pending for those electors. The count of seven implies they didn't exist. Two of the three were replaced, post-election, due to their vote. Do we need to put an asterisk? And now giving up, since one person in the world thinks there's only 7.Idearat-1 (talk) 03:27, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

I will change 7 to 10 in the list, as discussed below and consistent with the above comment. If someone disagrees, feel free to revert AND discuss here to reach consensus. Mdewman6 (talk) 05:12, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

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The part in invaldating votes really needs a cite. It seems to be the case in Minnesota, the earlier linked law and other sources seem to support this This has been challenged but so far unsuccessfully and it only involved the elector and at least one judge said one problem is the challenge came way too late

Maine seems a little more complicated. Given what happened in 2016, research is difficult but I couldn't find nay mention of the law providing for invalidation of votes. This is somewhat WP:Syn but if you look at the law, it says they the elector will vote for the candidates who received the largest number of votes in the district but doesn't actually seem to say what should happen if this doesn't happen. AFACT, the only time this has ever been tested is again in 2016 and in that case (as also mentioned in one of the sources above) the ballot was ruled out of order and he then voted again as he should have done for Clinton. So it is fairly ambigious what will happen if the elector just keeps voting for the same "wrong" candidate. My guess is the same will happen as in Minnesota but the law doesn't really seem to provide for that, in fact the only mention of replacing electors is if they aren't present. There is also the question of what happens if e.g. the candidate is dead.

Colorado is an interesting one. There was significant controversy and legal challenges in 2016 beginning before the Colorado EC even met. The end result was similar to Minnesota in that the elector who voted "incorrectly" was replaced but with an open question over the constitutionality of this. The law there is similar to Maine except that it specifically makes a provision for replacement due to a vacancy as a result of "refusal to act" which was interpreted as the primary basis for this replacement. It seems possible this will be clarified in the future.

Nil Einne (talk) 13:01, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

BTW, the above comment is an adaption of something I wrote elsewhere. It is entirely my own work, so it's not WP:Copyvio for me to add it here as I'm free to release it under the appropriate licences. (I'm only making this comment to avoid any possible confusion over the copyright status, please don't take it as an excuse to link me to stuff elsewhere.) Nil Einne (talk) 13:04, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Maine's law does not expressly provide for the removal/replacement of the elector. In 2016, the elector was simply persuaded to vote as pledged after attempting to vote faithlessly and having his vote questioned by state officials present (and I believe, at least one fellow elector). Mdewman6 (talk) 05:12, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

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Link #4 to Minnesota's electors voting public is out of date. Section 208.08 was repealed. Too lazy to figure out what the current deal is and update, but someone should look into that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.17.17.83 (talk) 17:29, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

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Can 1796 really be cited as a case (and the only case) where faithless electors changed the outcome of the election? Few electors were "pledged" in the modern sense and many did not straight-ticket vote regardless of whether they were pledged or not. The current text implies that Pinckney would have been elected President were it not for faithless electors, but this is at best misleading, because then we would have vice-presidential candidate being elected president, obstensibly due to faithless electors, but this did not occur. At best, the election could be viewed as the only case where faithless electors changed the outcome of the vice presidential election, as Jefferson was elected over Pinckney. Really, all these issues are the result of the pre-12th amendment Electoral College, which did not lend itself to party ticket voting, as came to a head in 1800.

I argue this sentence should be deleted, to be consistent with the main Electoral College wikipedia article that presently indicates that faithless electors have never changed the outcome. Or at least, the sentence should be revised to make more clear what the expected outcome was and how faithless electors changed it, which if substantiated could be elaborated upon in detailed section later in the article.Mdewman6 (talk) 17:27, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

This article cites FairVote as there having been "179 instances of faithlessness" in U.S. history. However, the current version of the FairVote page states there have been either 167 (stated twice) or 184 faithless votes. FairVote goes on to describe the votes by election, which add up to 167, suggesting the 184 number is erroneous. Here, the faithless votes in the list add up to 208. The discrepancies between this list and the FairVote list seem to involve the elections of 1796, 1812, 1840, 1896, and 2016.

The 1796 election is particularly complicated. 2016 is a unique case because there were would-be faithless electors that were thwarted for the first time, where 7 faithless votes were successfully made, 2 electors were removed, and the elector in Maine was persuaded to vote as pledged, even though Maine's law did not expressly provide for removal like in Colorado or Minnesota. The page is currently about faithless electors and contains the section "List of Faithless Electors", so I guess 2016 should be 10 instead of 7, as FairVote indicates. To my knowledge, 2016 is the only election where electors attempted to vote faithlessly but were prevented from doing so. Thus, with the exception of 2016, faithless electors and faithless votes should be equivalent.

For now, I will change the page to say 167 instead of 179 while we work to reconcile the list, as at least that is an external source, though I believe there are issues with the FairVote tally as well. I do not think we should just replicate FairVote's list without other evidence. The current list cites a lot of contemporary sources for the older elections and someone clearly put a lot of effort into constructing that list. I will try to investigate things as I have time, but if anyone else has any insights, please share!

Note also, we are presently putting electors that vote faithlessly for either president AND/OR vice president all in the same bin. I believe there have been far more electors who voted faithlessly for vice president, most of whom voted as pledged/expected for president, and less often an elector votes faithlessly for both offices. Once we have a handle one the historical list, we could consider making this distinction.

These discrepancies bring up the larger question, in essence raised earlier on the talk page: Should faithless votes be tallied, or faithless electors? The distinction is most important for 2016. But faithlessness and pledges become obscured in earlier elections. Some scholars prefer the term anomalous electors or votes. I am not proposing to move the page, but we should consider how we could implement that distinction into the page, once we understand and reconcile the discrepancies in the historical tallies. Mdewman6 (talk) 05:12, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Update: I (and others) have been in contact with FairVote, who have updated their page. They now tabulate details for 165 total historical faithless electors, which I have updated on this and related pages. The major discrepancies now seem to be 1796, 1840, 1896, and 1892. I am removing the Ohio elector who did not vote in 1812, as FairVote has noted many electors in early elections failed to show up and vote, often due to illness, and we should, for now at least, not bin these with faithless electors. Similarly, the 2 electors from 1832 who "refused" to vote were apparently ill, so I am removing those as well, unless someone has evidence to the contrary. Mdewman6 (talk) 23:47, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

To what extent are 1872 (well 62 of them) and 1912 truly cases of faithless electors? The rejection of the three Greely votes mean that it's not possible to cast a vote that will be counted for a dead candidate so surely the 62 who voted for Brown for either President or Veep (1 was completely faithless) were being as faithful as they could be in the circumstances? And the precedent meant that come 1912 it was clear that a Sherman vote was unviable.

Also the 1896 election doesn't cover the Veep electoral votes very well and I have no real understanding of how fusion works with the same nominee for President but different ones for Veep. Was there some sort of single ticket that combined Democrat and Populist elector candidates who then voted differently or was there some mechanism to combine the votes for the two parties to win the state than uncombine them to collect electors? Timrollpickering (talk) 20:48, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

@Timrollpickering: Yeah, FairVote now breaks out the votes for deceased candidates in 1872 and 1912, as well as those who were faithless only in their votes for vice president, while maintaining the 165 total. I think it would be worthwhile to make this distinction in the lead. That's why some prefer the term "anomalous votes" as the term that encompasses both truly "faithless" electors and those not voting for their party's nominee for some other reason (e.g. death). FairVote uses the term "deviant" votes but I think anomalous is more appropriate. In any case, "faithless" is the most common term and should continue to be used here. Based on the breakdown by ticket it's unclear whether there was a faithless elector or not, in this case being someone who did not vote for Benjamin Gratz Brown for either office.

There is the precedent from 1872 of Congress discarding votes for deceased persons, apparently due to a literal interpretation of the requirement that electors vote for "persons" to mean living persons. However, as an aside, this could cause major issues if the winning candidate were to die before the electoral college vote. Without clear expectations from the winning party communicated to the electors about how to handle the situation and who to vote for instead, they could scatter their votes (as they did in 1872) which would risk the losing candidate winning a majority of electoral votes if there were some votes for the deceased candidate thrown out, or at least would force a contingent election in the House. Simply voting for the vice presidential candidate of the same party could create a similar problem for vice president if the electors failed to coalesce around a replacement VP. A death after the electoral vote is even worse, as discarding all the votes for the now deceased winner of the election would likely lead to the election of their opponent, as that person would likely be the only other person to have received electoral votes (and thus qualify for the contingent election). In that case, which is perhaps more equitable, Congress would almost have to count the votes for the deceased candidate and allow the 20th amendment to kick in at inauguration day.

But I digress. As for 1896, I am not sure how to deal with the vice presidential votes either. The 1896 election article does not break down the results by ticket, as you say. Here, we currently claim that the People's ticket did not win any states and 27 electors faithlessly voted for the People's VP nominee. FairVote turns that around and claims the People's party won 31 electoral votes but 4 electors faithlessly voted for the Democrat VP nominee (as described by someone else on the election talk page). I am not sure which is correct (if either are!). Someone else claims here that the People's party won even more than 31 EVs. Someone should really research the issue and clarify things with respect to winning tickets in each state with some good references. I haven't been able to cross the activation energy barrier for me to do that yet, but will try! Mdewman6 (talk) 22:27, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

In 1872 Greely/Brown won a total of 66 votes. Brown received 18 for President and 47 for Veep totalling 65 so one Liberal Republican/Democrat elector did not vote for him at all. There have been cases of parties replacing people on tickets post convention - Thomas Eagleton/Sargent Shriver in 1972 is the most obvious major party case with the DNC voting him in - and so it's probable there's now provision to nominate a replacement up to mid December though how far that would work with the various state laws to bind the electors is unclear. A candidate who died between voting finishing and counting should almost certainly win with an immediate vacancy but it's astonishing how much of this has not been tied down - the 20th amendment only really defines "President elect" and "Vice President elect" at the moment when the term starts and doesn't cover during the rounds of election. Timrollpickering (talk) 23:57, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

I count not 167 or 208 but 215 (I counted twice) in the list of faithless electors section just so somebody knows. (2601:681:200:43C0:EDF5:207:D66B:9FA4 (talk) 01:50, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

I think in addition to the current map there should also be one that just shows state that have actually banned faithless electors, i.e. force them to vote for the winning candidate or replace them, excluding those that only impose fines. There is a significant difference between them and currently the map doesnt reflect that. (Alternatively use just one map and use different shades for both cases) jonas (talk) 01:26, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

I would support a multicolored map depicting the different types of faithless elector laws. It would be inappropriate to leave out the few states that disincentivize faithlessness via fines. It is important to make the distinction between states that provide for removal/replacement and those that have no specified enforcement. See FairVote, https://www.fairvote.org/faithless_elector_state_laws, though I think we can bin the uniform faithful elector act states with the other "no penalty, vote cancelled" states. Mdewman6 (talk) 21:02, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

@Mdewman6: In some of the pink states on the map, the laws merely say that the electors "shall" vote for specific candidates, so I don't think it's very accurate to say that these laws are "aimed at dissuading or thwarting faithless electors". I suggest using the current sentence only to describe the 17 enforcing states, or changing it to something more general like "legally require electors to vote for specific candidates". Heitordp (talk) 04:46, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

@Heitordp: Well, those are the laws those states have chosen to enact, regardless of how effective or ineffective they may be, and are clearly distinct from the 17 states that have no law on the subject at all. That's why the statement is immediately followed with the caveat "though in half of these jurisdictions there is no enforcement mechanism." For example, Maine had no enforcement mechanism in 2016 (and remains that way I think, I need to check on this and confirm with the FairVote people) and influence from state officials and other electors dissuaded the elector attempting to vote for Bernie Sanders to vote for Clinton instead. I don't believe his Sanders vote was actually officially declared invalid, since the statute says nothing about discarding votes or replacing electors, I think he was just reminded his vote was in violation of the law and he reluctantly acquiesced. I'm open to additional text to make the distinction more clear, but I think things are adequately described at present. Mdewman6 (talk) 21:16, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

I see your point now, I revised that sentence to something closer to what it was originally. Hopefully that addresses the issue, but feel free to improve. Mdewman6 (talk) 00:39, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

This wording appears on the page. I think Bailey himself disagreed with it. I would like to see some nuance added to this page regarding Bailey's position that he was voting for his district. Geographyinitiative (talk) 15:00, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

I have no idea about this, but assume that regardless of his motives or goals, he was pledged to the candidates of his party to be appointed as an elector. As always, feel free to add more detail with references if the present description is misleading or incomplete. Mdewman6 (talk) 21:20, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Where does the term "faithless elector" come from? It is a loaded, pejorative term that challenges the constitutional role of the electoral college as a body of individuals exercising their best judgment, not to mechanically register the majority opinion of their respective states. They might just as accurately be called "free" or "conscientious" or "reconsidering" electors. Where does the label "faithless" come from; what is its history? The answer should be in the article. -- ℜob C. alias ALAROB 19:09, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

I don't know the origin of the term. If anyone has some sourcing that sheds some light on it, by all means I agree it should be added to the article. FairVote uses the term "deviant" electors/votes, whereas others prefer "anomalous" electors/votes, but "faithless" is clearly the most common term, even though it has come to include all anomalous electoral votes, including those in the case of a deceased candidate and those who did not vote due to illness in some counts. Mdewman6 (talk) 22:28, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

It seems to me that coloring states with aggressive anti-faithless-elector laws green, and states with more lenient faithless-elector laws red, clearly promotes the point of view that states should pass laws against faithless electors. Could the colors be changed to ones without direct positive/negative connotations in American culture? — Preceding unsigned comment added by AdamPronouncedAdam (talk • contribs) 04:45, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. In this case, it doesn't make sense for states with prohibitive laws to be colored green or for states with permissive laws to be colored red. – MrPersonHumanGuy (talk) 16:03, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Strong agreement, came here to say the same thing. I'd personally change it to blue and orange, perhaps? If anyone wants to make the change, they can, and we can RfC it if it becomes an issue. TW 14:25, 8 October 2025 (UTC)

Shouldn't the 3 votes for Greeley that were invalidated not be counted? It is probably not faithless if you still try to vote for the pledged candidate but the court just rejects it. Please let me know. Breck0530 (talk) 21:16, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

The vice president was replaced before the election so shouldn't it not be counted as a faithless elector? Even the 1912 election page didn't mention about a faithless elector it just mentioned about the vice president dying before the election. Breck0530 (talk) 22:21, 7 September 2025 (UTC)