Presidential Electors and the Electoral College: An Examination ...

expected to simply record the votes obtained on Election Day—without any thought to the contrary. The recent appearance of faithless votes is antithetical to what the office had come to entail. Elector independence represents a very real threat to the presidential selection process and, in turn, to democracy. As Bennett argued, “the problem of faithless electors is deserving of the most careful attention, for the possibilities for mischief growing out of elector faithlessness are quite real” (2006, 98). Nonetheless, virtually no research documents this phenomenon.

The recent increased incidence of faithless electors unnerves voters. Considering how close recent elections have been, the possibility that a faithless elector could affect the outcome of an election is not unrealistic. In my first survey, which examined presidential electors of the 2000 Electoral College, two Republican electors agreed with the statement that George W. Bush had not been elected legitimately; two more Republican electors were unsure. Two Republican defections would have thrown the contest into the House of Representatives. This example suggests that elector fidelity is an issue to which scholars should devote greater attention. Consequently, I took up this task in subsequent surveys of presidential electors.

Changing the outcome of a presidential election through a faithless vote represents the doomsday scenario of the faithless elector. Such an event would indeed put the republic at risk. That it has not happened yet is no counter to the fact that it could happen. Many things are quite unlikely, yet one takes great pains to prevent them. This is especially the case after the fact. Consider the United States’s response to 9/11. Although many in the intelligence community had warned that such attacks were likely, it took this one event to completely refocus American foreign policy on the issue of terrorism. The research I have conducted suggests that the potential for mass elector defections does indeed exist and that such behavior is much more likely than most observers could ever conceive. Given this knowledge, it would be irresponsible to wait for such an event when action can be taken in advance to avoid its occurrence.

Whether this doomsday scenario ever becomes reality, even one faithless electoral vote is one too many. Faithless electoral voting effectively