Electoral College voters who were faithless on Monday were more upset with Hillary Clinton’s candidacy than that of President-elect Trump.
For all of the hype about electors switching their vote from Trump to anyone but Trump, the majority of those electors who cast protest votes were supposed to vote for Hillary Clinton.
Four electors in Washington state who were supposed to vote for Clinton instead voted otherwise: three for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and one for a Native American leader. In contrast, just two electors in Texas voted against Trump.
The rules vary by state. In 29 states, electors are legally bound to vote for the winner of their state. The rest are not.
Voters who fail to vote the will of their state are known as faithless electors. “That occurrence is nothing new,” said Paul Sracic, a Youngstown State University political scientist and expert in the electoral college. “There have been approximately 157 electors have done just that in the past 200 plus years.”
In most states, they are simply ruled out of order and then an alternative is found to vote they way they are supposed to, which is exactly what happened when Maine Democratic elector David Bright cast his ballot Monday for Sanders, who lost to Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary this spring.
Bright issued a statement that read, “I cast my vote for Bernie Sanders not out of spite, or malice, or anger, or as an act of civil disobedience.”
Instead, he said he cast his vote to “represent thousands of Democratic Maine voters many less than a third my age who came into Maine politics for the first time this year because of Bernie Sanders.” But his vote was discarded, and only the six votes in Washington and Texas were cast for a candidate other than Clinton or Trump.
