The 538 Electoral College presidential electors meeting in state capitols across the country on Monday to cast votes for Joe Biden or President Trump include some notable names, including former President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee and a former secretary of state and New York senator.
Rules vary by state, but the electors are generally chosen by state parties and pledge to vote for that party’s nominee for president. If a party’s candidate wins the popular vote in a given state, its electors cast the Electoral College votes for that candidate. Biden is set to clinch the Electoral College and become president-elect by a 306-232 margin over Trump, based on results in the Nov. 3 election.
Notable electors include:
Stacey Abrams, Georgia (Biden)
The former Georgia state House minority leader and 2018 Democratic gubernatorial nominee is widely credited as being a driving force behind flipping Georgia Democratic in the presidential election through her anti-voter suppression organization, Fair Fight. Abrams was also a long-rumored contender to be Biden’s vice presidential pick.
Bill Clinton, New York, (Biden)
The former president was also a New York elector in 2016 and voted for his wife, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton, New York (Biden)
Had the former secretary of state won the 2016 presidential election and sought reelection, it would likely have been her that the New York electors voted for rather than Biden.
Andrew Cuomo, New York (Biden)
The New York governor gained both national acclaim and criticism for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic in New York and is a rumored contender to be Biden’s nominee for attorney general.
Jim Justice, West Virginia (Trump)
Justice, a billionaire and the richest person in West Virginia, is among a handful of governors also acting as electors. Justice was elected as a Democrat but switched parties in 2017 and has since been a staunch Trump ally.
David Kennedy, California (Biden)
The Stanford University history professor emeritus has been more of a familiar face on the History Channel than electoral politics. Kennedy wrote the widely adopted high school history book The American Pageant. He won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for history for Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945.
Lori Lightfoot, Illinois (Biden)
Like Cuomo, Lightfoot, the first-term mayor of Chicago, has also received national notoriety and condemnation amid the coronavirus pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests and riots that took place over the summer. In late May, she exchanged profanities with a city alderman about the riots.
Pete McCloskey, California (Biden)
McCloskey and Biden were both prominent players in politics in 1972. That year, Biden beat an incumbent Senate Republican at age 29, becoming the nation’s youngest senator. McCloskey, meanwhile, was in his fifth year as a House member representing a swath of the Bay Area. In 1972, McCloskey challenged President Richard Nixon for the Republican nomination from the left, coming up far short running on an anti-Vietnam War platform. The next year, he was the first member of Congress to call for Nixon’s resignation after “the Saturday Night Massacre,” an incident aimed at covering up the Watergate scandal.
Janice McGeachin, Idaho (Trump)
McGeachin is Idaho’s lieutenant governor, still in her first term, and has made a name for herself battling coronavirus-related restrictions. Earlier this year, she appeared in a controversial video opposing shutdowns in which she placed a gun on top of a Bible. Just before Thanksgiving, she told Idaho residents that “the more we learn” about the virus, “the less we have to fear.”
Kristi Noem, South Dakota (Trump)
A rising star in the Republican Party, first-term South Dakota Gov. Noem has refused to implement a statewide face-covering mandate in response to the coronavirus pandemic. In September, she posted a video of herself hunting and shooting down a bird to show “how we do social distancing in South Dakota,” declaring: “Less COVID, more hunting.”
Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania (Biden)
The Pennsylvania attorney general has been the most prominent face countering legal fights by the Trump campaign to reverse Biden’s win. Shapiro has made numerous television appearances denouncing the Trump campaign’s efforts and is active on Twitter in pushing back against what have been almost all losing court cases. A Shapiro-authored brief last Thursday in a case before the Supreme Court aimed at overturning the election result in four states where Trump lost called it a “seditious abuse” of the courts that rests on conspiracy theories and falsehoods.
Nikema Williams, Georgia (Biden)
On Monday, Williams will be wearing four different hats: presidential elector, state Democratic Party chairwoman, state senator, and representative-elect. On Nov. 3, Williams was elected to Georgia’s 5th Congressional District, succeeding the late Democratic Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights icon whom Williams counts as a mentor. Williams was elected to the state Senate in 2017 and was named party chairwoman two years later. Under her leadership, Georgia elected a Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden, for the first time since 1992.
Rosalind Wyman, California (Biden)
Wyman was the youngest person ever elected to the Los Angeles City Council, when she was 22 years old. In that position, she was highly influential in luring the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team to Los Angeles, starting in the 1958 season (the Dodgers won the 2020 World Series in a coronavirus-shortened season.) At 90, Wyman is the oldest presidential elector in 2020.
