You are wrong, sadly. While the ballot does have candidates for president, technically what you’re doing is a district election for your presidential delegate, who then casts a vote for the president however they want. Usually this means they vote whatever way the popular vote goes in their district, but sometimes you get a “faithless elector” who legally overrides democracy and votes for a different candidate.
but sometimes you get a “false elector” who legally overrides democracy and votes for a different candidate.
Genuine questions - how often does that happen? It can’t be a lot, and it can’t make the deciding vote, right, otherwise the whole system would have been ripped apart by the media long ago…
As of the 2020 election, there have been a total of 165 instances of faithlessness, 90 of which were for president, while 75 were for vice president. They have never swung an election, and nearly all have voted for third party candidates or non-candidates, as opposed to switching their support to a major opposing candidate.
You are wrong, sadly. While the ballot does have candidates for president, technically what you’re doing is a district election for your presidential delegate, who then casts a vote for the president however they want. Usually this means they vote whatever way the popular vote goes in their district, but sometimes you get a “faithless elector” who legally overrides democracy and votes for a different candidate.
It’s supremely fucked up.
Edit: not false elector, it’s faithless elector
Ah right the electoral college and that sort of thing. Thanks!
Genuine questions - how often does that happen? It can’t be a lot, and it can’t make the deciding vote, right, otherwise the whole system would have been ripped apart by the media long ago…
It happens frequently enough there’s a Wikipedia page:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector
Looks like it happened in 2000, 2004, and 2016.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector