作者pursuistmi (common people)
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標題[資訊] 不忠實選舉人
時間Fri Sep 26 20:48:37 2008
Faithless elector
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A faithless elector is a member of the United States electoral college who
does not cast his/her electoral vote for the person whom they have pledged to
elect. Faithless electors are pledged electors and thus different from
unpledged electors.
On 158 occasions, electors have cast their votes for President or Vice
President in a manner different from that prescribed by the legislature of
the state they represented. Of those, 71 votes were changed because the
original candidate died before the elector was able to cast a vote. Two votes
were not cast at all when electors chose to abstain from casting their
electoral vote for any candidate. The remaining 85 were changed by the
elector's personal interest, or perhaps by accident. Usually, the faithless
electors act alone. An exception was in 1836 when 23 Virginia electors
changed their vote together.
Political parties choose their slate of electors in each state, and they
generally select party members with a reputation for high loyalty to the
party and its candidate. Moreover, a faithless elector runs a risk of censure
and other political retaliation from his party. Thus, the parties have
generally been successful in keeping their electors faithful, leaving out the
cases in which a candidate died before the elector was able to cast a vote.
Twenty-four states have laws to punish faithless electors.[1] While no
faithless elector has ever been punished, the constitutionality of state
pledge laws was brought before the Supreme Court in 1952 (Ray v. Blair, 343
U.S. 214). The court ruled in favor of the state's right to require electors
to pledge to vote for their party's nominee, as well as to remove electors
who refuse to pledge. Once the elector has voted, their vote can only be
changed in states such as Michigan and Minnesota, where votes other than
those pledged are rendered invalid. However, in all twenty-four states, a
faithless elector may only be punished after he or she votes. The Supreme
Court ruled that electors are acting as a function of the state, not the
federal government, and therefore states have the right to govern electors.
The constitutionality of state laws punishing electors for actually casting a
faithless vote, rather than refusing to pledge, has never been decided by the
Supreme Court.
To date, faithless electors have never changed the otherwise expected outcome
of the election.
[edit] List of faithless electors
The following is a list of all faithless electors (most recent first). The
number preceding each entry is the number of faithless electors for the given
year.
(1) 2004 election: A Minnesota elector, pledged for Democrats John Kerry and
John Edwards, cast his or her presidential vote for John Ewards [sic],
apparently accidentally. (All of Minnesota's electors cast their vice
presidential ballots for John Edwards.) Minnesota's electors cast secret
ballots, so unless one of the electors claims responsibility, it is unlikely
that the identity of the faithless elector will ever be known. As a result of
this incident, Minnesota Statutes were amended to provide for public
balloting of the electors' votes and invalidation of a vote cast for someone
other than the candidate the elector is pledged to.
(1) 2000 election: Washington, D.C. Elector Barbara Lett-Simmons, pledged for
Democrats Al Gore and Joe Lieberman, cast no electoral votes as a protest of
Washington D.C.'s lack of statehood, which she described as the federal
district's "colonial status".
(1) 1988 election: West Virginia Elector Margaret Leach, pledged for
Democrats Michael Dukakis and Lloyd Bentsen, instead of casting her votes for
the candidates in their positions on the national ticket, cast her
presidential vote for Bentsen and her vice presidential vote for Dukakis.
(-) 1984 election: In Illinois, the electors, pledged to Ronald Reagan and
George H. W. Bush, conducted their vote in a secret ballot. When the electors
voted for Vice President, one of the votes was for Geraldine Ferraro, the
Democratic nominee. After several minutes of confusion, a second ballot was
taken. Bush won unanimously in this ballot, and it was this ballot that was
reported to Congress.
(1) 1976 election: Washington Elector Mike Padden, pledged for Republican
Gerald Ford and Bob Dole, cast his presidential electoral vote for Ronald
Reagan, who had challenged Ford for the Republican nomination. He cast his
vice presidential vote, as pledged, for Dole.
(1) 1972 election: Virginia Elector Roger MacBride, pledged for Republicans
Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, cast his electoral votes for Libertarian
candidates John Hospers and Theodora Nathan. MacBride's vote for Nathan was
the first electoral vote cast for a woman in U.S. history. MacBride became
the Libertarian candidate for President in the 1976 election.
(1) 1968 election: North Carolina Elector Lloyd W. Bailey, pledged for
Republicans Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, cast his votes for American
Independent Party candidates George Wallace and Curtis LeMay.
(1) 1960 election: Oklahoma Elector Henry D. Irwin, pledged for Republicans
Richard Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., cast his presidential electoral
vote for Democratic non-candidate Harry Flood Byrd and his vice presidential
electoral vote for Republican Barry Goldwater. (Fourteen unpledged electors
also voted for Byrd for president, but supported Strom Thurmond, then a
Democrat, for vice president.)
(1) 1956 election: Alabama Elector W. F. Turner, pledged for Democrats Adlai
Stevenson and Estes Kefauver, cast his votes for Walter Burgwyn Jones and
Herman Talmadge.
(1) 1948 election: Two Tennessee electors were on both the Democratic Party
and the States' Rights Democratic Party slates. When the Democratic Party
slate won, one of these electors voted for the Democratic nominees Harry
Truman and Alben Barkley. The other, Preston Parks, cast his votes for
States' Rights Democratic Party candidates Strom Thurmond and Fielding
Wright, making him a faithless elector.
(8) 1912 election: Republican vice presidential candidate James S. Sherman
died before the election. Eight Republican electors had pledged their votes
to him but voted for Nicholas Murray Butler instead.
(4) 1896 election: The Democratic Party and the People’s Party both ran
William Jennings Bryan as their presidential candidate, but ran different
candidates for Vice President. The Democratic Party nominated Arthur Sewall
and the People’s Party nominated Thomas Watson. The People’s Party won 31
electoral votes but four of those electors voted with the Democratic ticket,
supporting Bryan as President and Sewall as Vice President.
(6) 1892 election: In Oregon, three electors voted for Democrat Grover
Cleveland, and one for the third-party Populist candidate. All four were
pledged to Republican President Benjamin Harrison, who failed to get
reelected. Also, in North Dakota, one elector voted for the Democrats and one
for the Populists, while the Republicans had won the state.
(63) 1872 election: 63 electors for Horace Greeley changed their votes after
Greeley's death, which occurred before the electoral vote could be cast.
Greeley's remaining three electors cast their presidential votes for Greeley
and had their votes discounted by Congress.
(4) 1860 election: 4 electors in New Jersey, pledged for Northern Democrat
Stephen Douglas, voted for the eventual victor: Republican candidate Abraham
Lincoln.
(23) 1836 election: The Democratic Party nominated Richard M. Johnson of
Kentucky as their vice presidential candidate. The 23 electors from Virginia
refused to support Johnson with their votes upon learning of the allegation
that he had lived with an African-American woman. There was no majority in
the Electoral College and the decision was deferred to the Senate, which
supported Johnson as the Vice President.
(32) 1832 election: Two National Republican Party electors from the state of
Maryland refused to vote for presidential candidate Henry Clay and did not
cast a vote for him or for his running mate. All 30 electors from
Pennsylvania refused to support the Democratic vice presidential candidate
Martin Van Buren, voting instead for William Wilkins.
(7) 1828 election: Seven (of nine) electors from Georgia refused to vote for
vice presidential candidate John Calhoun. All seven cast their vice
presidential votes for William Smith instead.
(1) 1820 election: William Plumer pledged to vote for Democratic Republican
candidate James Monroe, but he cast his vote for John Quincy Adams who was
also a Democratic Republican, but was not a candidate in the 1820 election.
Some historians contend that Plumer did not feel that the Electoral College
should unanimously elect any President other than George Washington, but this
claim is disputed. (Monroe lost another three votes because three electors
died before casting ballots and were not replaced.)
(4) 1812 election: Three electors pledged to vote for Federalist vice
presidential candidate Jared Ingersoll voted for Democratic Republican
Elbridge Gerry. One Ohio elector did not vote.
(6) 1808 election: Six electors from New York were pledged to vote for
Democratic Republican James Madison as President and George Clinton as Vice
President. Instead, they voted for Clinton to be President, with three voting
for Madison as Vice President and the other three voting for James Monroe to
be Vice President.
(1) 1796 election: Samuel Miles, an elector from Pennsylvania, was pledged to
vote for Federalist presidential candidate John Adams, but voted for
Democratic Republican candidate Thomas Jefferson. He cast his other
presidential vote as pledged for Thomas Pinckney. (This election took place
prior to the passage of the 12th Amendment, so there were not separate
ballots for president and vice president.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector
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