Faithless elector: A court ruling just changed how we pick our president

[brooklynite]

NBC News

A federal appeals court ruled late Tuesday that presidential electors who cast the actual ballots for president and vice president are free to vote as they wish and cannot be required to follow the results of the popular vote in their states.

The decision could give a single elector the power to decide the outcome of a presidential election — if the popular vote results in an apparent Electoral College tie.

"This issue could be a ticking time bomb in our divided politics. It's not hard to imagine how a single faithless elector, voting differently than his or her state did, could swing a close presidential election," said Mark Murray, NBC News senior political editor.

It hasn't been much of an issue in American political history because when an elector refuses to follow the results of a state's popular vote, the state simply throws the ballot away. But Tuesday's ruling says states cannot do that.

[FBaggins]

1. I'm not sure I would go that far

I haven't read the whole decision, but it appears that what the court did was rule that the state can't remove a faithless elector and replace him with another person who will cast the vote "correctly".

I don't see anything about Congress having to accept the vote as valid.

[MarvinGardens]

3. I view this as a good thing.

It will make both parties worry about a possible runaway EC, perhaps paving the way for abolition of the EC.

[FoxNewsSucks]

4. I wondered why this is coming up now,

since the electors are supposedly such a hand-picked group of partisans that the likelihood of the vote changing anything is miniscule. If there had ever been a time for the EC to save the country from a disaster, 2016 was it, and it didn't happen.

It occurred to me that this ruling may have been prompted by the movement in states to use their electoral votes to put in the winner of the popular vote. A "red" state that signed onto that 270 compact would not be able to force the elector to vote for the Democratic popular-vote winner.

[FBaggins]

5. It just took that long for the case to get this far

The Supreme Court will likely get a chance to weigh in next year - prior to the next time that it matters.

[Fullduplexxx]

6. Faithless elector

[lindysalsagal]

7. Sounds to me like our votes really don't matter.

Not liking this.