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Faithless Elector Watch: Al Gore Says No Dice

Timothy Noah
Posted Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2000, at 2:09 PM ET

In his statement praising the Florida Supreme Court's favorable Nov. 21 ruling, which could clear the way for a dimpled-chad Gore victory, the vice president expressed strong disapproval for Electoral College faithlessness of the type once contemplated by the popular novelist James A. Michener and more recently advocated by Bob Beckel, Matthew Miller, Daniel Schorr, the Coalition Coalition, Citizens for True Democracy, and some visitors to E the People, a Web site that promotes political activism in every conceivable direction at once. Here is what Gore said:

Both Gov. Bush and I should also continue to urge our supporters to tone down their rhetoric and lift up our common respect for democracy. Some of my own supporters have emphasized the fact that we won the national popular vote, but our Constitution requires victory in the Electoral College. I completely disavow any effort to persuade electors to switch their support from the candidate to whom they are pledged. I will not accept the support of any elector pledged to Gov. Bush.



Chatterbox has five thoughts about Gore's anti-faithlessness stance:

1) The Florida Supreme Court decision so improves Gore's chances of winning in the Electoral College that he may have more to lose than to gain from any unconventional behavior on the part of electors. If Gore looks like he has it in the bag, maybe Bush will try to sway electors (though he'd have to sway a lot more, and he'd lack the "I won the popular vote" argument). As Chatterbox has written before, the Republicans probably have someone looking into Electoral College faithlessness scenarios, though whoever it is seems to be better at keeping it quiet than Bob Beckel.

2) The possibility that Bush will goose the Republican-controlled Florida legislature into trying to unseat Gore electors, which James Baker has already hinted at, makes it imperative that Gore be consistent in his "trust the voter" stance. And that, of course, means being very stern about Electoral College faithlessness, even if it's intended to honor the national popular vote.

3) Beckel, who is collecting information on Republican electors with an eye toward persuading them to bolt to Gore, has already stated publicly that if Gore tries to call it off, he'll ignore Gore. Indeed, obeying Gore would only establish that he is in cahoots with the official campaign. Knowing this, Gore risks little by taking the high road.

4) Gore's refusal to accept electors pledged to Bush is mostly rhetorical. Candidates don't rule on the legitimacy of electors; state legislatures and Congress do. But Gore's words would acquire real meaning under the following not-inconceivable scenario: Maria Cantwell wins the Senate seat in Washington, dividing Senate control evenly between Democrats and Republicans; the Republican House votes to unseat a faithless elector needed by Gore to win the presidency; the Senate votes along party lines, requiring Gore, as president of the Senate, to cast the tie-breaking vote; Gore consults his conscience about whether his refusal to accept an elector's faithless vote exerts controlling moral authority.

5) But it's also possible that Gore experiences sincere moral outrage at the thought of anybody encouraging an elector to violate his pledge to support his party's candidate.

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Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.
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Reader Comment from The Fray:


Constitutionally and legally speaking there is no legal requirement that an elector follow his pledge. Nor can a candidate "refuse" the electors vote. The "institution" of "pledging" electors came about relatively recently, after the civil war and was designed to inject certainty into the system--which alone is an argument against it, since the American government was designed to be uncertain precisely to avoid cushy tyrannies of the dynastic variety, à la Bush, Kennedy, Roosevelt.

Happily this fiasco will discredit the electoral college. Hopefully it will also lead to a constitutional convention. Simply put the American government is no longer what it was intended to be and only fundamental constitutional reform can change that.

Unhappily the system as it is serves the interests of a vested power elite who have no interest in seeing real change. So Gush and Bore are both sock puppet mirror images of each other, with no real differences. Both support the death penalty and fighting wars in foreign lands for oil, both claim to oppose racism while happily playing code word politics, both are super rich... The insipid quality of these two ciphers shows that the system needs to be rebuilt. 200 plus years have changed the semi-feudal caste systems to post-industrial society--when will our laws and institutions catch up?

--Eric Engle

(To reply, click here.)

(11/25)

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