Presidential Electors and the Electoral College: An Examination of Lobbying, Wavering Electors, and Campaigns for Faithless Votes
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Presidential Electors and the Electoral College: An Examination ...

Chapter 1:  A Risk to the Republic?
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All Americans should have confidence their president is eligible to serve. In this unique and historic case, you may prove to be the Constitution’s last line of defense. (Personal communication with elector, July 2009)

After the vote of electors on December 15, 2008, many electors received letters threatening them with legal action. Consider the following excerpt:

When those who gave Mr. Obama money find out about this fraud, there will be many class action legal suits brought to regain the donations. The legal suit will go after Mr. Obama, the National Democratic Party and you. We have the lawyers and money to make this law suit [sic] a reality. We only wait now to have Mr. Obama be shown as a fraud. You have clearly shown yourself through your vote to have been a willing partner in the greatest fraud pulled on the American people. (Personal communication with elector, July 2009)

Many electors received one final letter offering to halt all legal action if electors renounced their votes by notarized letter to the Federal Election Commission and the Supreme Court.

Very little, if any, examination of this campaign or others like it has previously occurred. Yet in my research of presidential electors, I found that elector lobbying campaigns have been mounted regularly throughout the years. A seemingly large number of electors were contacted in the wake of the 2000 campaign in an effort to influence their votes. One elector even reported receiving thirty-five death threats and many “nasty, denigrating letters” (personal communication with elector, February 12, 2004). She noted:

I was also told, many times, that if I had signed an agreement to vote for President Bush, it was not legally binding, and I could vote any way I wished. What the callers could not seem to understand: When Texans give their word, that is it! I was very aware of what I could do, but I choose to honor my word. (Personal communication, February 12, 2004)

The following chapters investigate these lobbying campaigns in detail. This study thus provides the most systematic treatment to date of this