Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n
\nI\u2019ve been seeing some particularly stupid articles arguing electors have the duty to vote their conscience, not their pledge.<\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span>Article II, Section 1 of the United States Constitution provides that each state shall appoint electors.\u00a0 How and who gets appointed elector is up to the legislatures of the states. \u00a0The electors meet in their respective states and cast their votes for President which are transmitted to the Senate to be counted.\u00a0 This is a hold-over from the days when travel by foot or horse made national elections a logistical nightmare, but it\u2019s still the law.<\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span>Minnesota Statutes 208.03 provides that presidential electors shall be nominated by the major political parties at their convention and Minn. Stat. 208.04 says a vote for a presidential candidate cast in the general election is treated as a vote for the electors of that party.\u00a0 When a Minnesota voter casts a ballot for Hillary, she\u2019s actually voting for the electors appointed by the DFL Party.<\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span>In 2015, Minnesota adopted the Uniform Faithful Presidential Electors Act to bring our law into closer conformity with the majority of states.\u00a0 Under Minn. Stat. 208.43, electors sign a pledge:<\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span>\u201cIf selected for the position of elector, I agree to serve and to mark my ballots for president and vice president for the nominees for those offices of the party that nominated me.”<\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span>There is no penalty for refusing to honor the pledge.\u00a0 There should be.<\/span><\/p>\n
Minnesotans voted Hillary because, after listening to their speeches, scrutinizing their records and analyzing their promises, they thought Hillary would make a better president. \u00a0The law that equates a vote for Hillary as a vote for Pledged Electors does not authorize the electors to substitute their judgment for mine and instead vote for Bernie.\u00a0 The electors are merely the messenger transmitting my decision to Washington.\u00a0 We decide on the message.<\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span>It must be that way.\u00a0 I have no way to evaluate Muhammad Abdurrahman\u2019s judgment and beliefs.\u00a0 I never heard of him until he broke his pledge.\u00a0 It would be insane for me to hand him carte blanche to vote for anybody he liked \u2013 that would defeat the whole purpose of having a general election.\u00a0 Although it might make the campaigns shorter.\u00a0 Under that system, you\u2019d never get to see the candidates, never get to hear them.\u00a0 You\u2019d just vote \u201cDFL\u201d or \u201cGOP\u201d and the apparatchiks appointed by the big-shots in the smoke-filled rooms would pick whoever The Bosses decide to install as President \u2013 Hillary, then Jeb, then Chelsea, then one of George W\u2019s girls . . . .\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span>Joe Doakes.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: I\u2019ve been seeing some particularly stupid articles arguing electors have the duty to vote their conscience, not their pledge. \u00a0Article II, Section 1 of the United States Constitution provides that each state shall appoint electors.\u00a0 How and who gets appointed elector is up to the legislatures of the states. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-16"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61516"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61518,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61516\/revisions\/61518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}