As readers know, The Scrapbook is a longtime connoisseur of the Law of Unintended Consequences. And this election year has furnished more than a few examples.

Case in point: the Electoral College. Since Donald Trump won the electoral, but not the popular, vote in November, the left has been especially agitated about this “vestige of the founding era .  .  . when slavery was the law of the land,” as the New York Times put it in its demand for abolition last week. Indeed, so serious is left-wing grievance with the Electoral College these days that no less a figure than former president Josiah Bartlet (actor Martin Sheen) from TV’s West Wing joined other celebrities in publicly pleading with electors to change their votes. And some did. But not in the way that President Bartlet might have expected: Two Trump electors—so-called “faithless electors”—defected, but so did five Clinton electors.