Talk:Faithless electors in the 2016 United States presidential election

Constitutionality
can someone include information about the constitutionality of faithless elector laws? and if someone were to be punished or fined, that it could be challenged against the original intent of the constitution? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.138.72.196 (talk) 11:52, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Bold title removal
I have removed from the opening sentences two supposed names for this effort, for which I could find no source actually using those terms. It is frequent that people feel that a Wikipedia article has to start with a title of sorts in the first sentence, but if you read through MOS:BOLDTITLE, that's not the case. --Nat Gertler (talk) 03:05, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

"Revolt"

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: moved. (non-admin closure) Regards, --Frmorrison (talk) 15:15, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

The title of the article and the article itself repeatedly refer to this as a "revolt", without a clear source. This seems to me to fail in our goal to have a neutral point of view at least, and can reasonably be seen as failing accuracy altogether. A revolution is an attempt to overthrow power that is in place. Trump is not the president of the United States. The electors would not be warring against the government, they would be doing their appointed role in the selection of the next president. Can I get some support for moving this to simply Faithless electors in the United States presidential election, 2016, and removing the word "revolt" from the text unless it is quoted or at least cited? --Nat Gertler (talk) 03:55, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Support Hang googles (talk) 04:31, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Support. It shouldn't be phrased as a 'revolt' because they aren't 'revolting'; simply deciding how to vote. 331dot (talk) 11:52, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Suppport. A few people being faithless isn't really a revolt. Even if a source says it is, not everyone agrees so to be neutral we most remove the word revolt. --Frmorrison (talk) 15:12, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 13 December 2016

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: not moved. As for deletion, consensus is currently against that as well, and even if it weren't, RM isn't the correct place to discuss that. JudgeRM  (talk to me)  16:56, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Faithless electors in the United States presidential election, 2016 → 2016 United States Electoral College – Both more succinct and more commodious. kencf0618 (talk) 06:25, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
 * This isn't about the EC in general(which is discussed in the article about the election as a whole), just those who are considering being faithless, which is historically rare- and an organized effort to convince EC members to do so is unprecedented. If removing the 'faithless' from the title would help, maybe that would be OK("Electors in the United States presidential election, 2016). 331dot (talk) 11:56, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose, this article is not about all the 2016 electors however it is about the faithless ones.--Frmorrison (talk) 15:31, 13 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete or merge. WP is not news and in this case there isn't even any news yet. Srnec (talk) 01:54, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Faithless electors are historically rare, and there AFAIK has never been an organized effort to persuade electors to change their votes. This isn't a news story, but a notable occurrence. You don't suggest a merge target but merging this with the already lengthy article about the election itself would bury this. 331dot (talk) 02:01, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
 * There is no notable occurrence yet that deserves more than a few lines. Bury it, I say. Srnec (talk) 14:20, 14 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Support The Electoral College this election cycle has been subjected to unprecedented grassroots campaigns (with some electors receiving thousands of e-mails daily, with one Idahoan being being doxxed and at least one back east having been subjected to death threats), and ten electors have asked for an intelligence brief given the Russian hack of the general election. Furthermore, this is the only Wikipedia article on the electoral college for a specific election cycle. It is an unprecedented electoral college, one subject to unique pressures, so the article needs a wider ambit than the faithless electors in my estimation. Say, United States Electoral College, 2016? kencf0618 (talk) 03:09, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose. At this point, the faithless electors are the story. If the story develops otherwise, then there might be a move, but if we make it an Electoral College article at this point, then we have to struggle with whether we're being undue in focusing on the faithless electors, instead of whatever trivia is out there on the other electors. --Nat Gertler (talk) 03:14, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Support This issue has taken a change from remote talk to a story with much wider discussion. Putting this into the proposed new article makes sense. However, if this is done, it should be done with a redirect. An additional question is what happens with the strongly related Hamilton Electors article?Dogru144 (talk) 17:50, 14 December 2016 (UTC)Dogru144 (talk) 17:51, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Hamilton Electors is but one grassroots campaign. We should therefore have one compendious article with sufficient parsing. kencf0618 (talk) 01:01, 16 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete or merge. Some of the claims made in support are factually in error.  There was an organized effort in 1960 to persuade electors to vote for non-candidate Harry Byrd as a compromise Democrat to keep John F. Kennedy from becoming president, and it did result in 15 electoral votes for Byrd, but Wikipedia has never given this scheme more coverage than a paragraph in a larger article.  Giving this current effort an article by itself is undue weight based on Wikipedia's prior standards. [For the 1960 faithless elector scheme, see https://books.google.com/books?id=NyegUKwXX4EC&pg=PA22&lpg=PA22&dq=irwin+byrd+nixon+1960&source=bl&ots=OwNqFzDMv2&sig=FJSucLd7uMzHVnDEdoYZS3MlmhY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj89d_b0fTQAhVU6GMKHXwrAiMQ6AEIODAF#v=onepage&q=irwin%20byrd%20nixon%201960&f=false].  2602:30A:2ED1:5E30:F8E7:3956:50C1:7200 (talk) 21:56, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose. This has become a big deal in American politics, and will be discussed for years to come. KnowledgeBattle (Talk) | GodlessInfidel ︻╦╤── 21:33, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose. The whole article should be deleted and moved to a small subsection of the 2016 election page. Earthscent (talk) 21:44, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete and Merge The relevant information should be included on List of United States presidential electors, 2016, where the faithless electoral votes have already been noted. ErieSwiftByrd (talk) 02:11, 20 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose; this proposal appears to have been largely overtaken by events, which have justified keeping this article at its present title. It is worth noting that an RM is the wrong venue to propose that an article either be deleted or merged elsewhere, and that the far more populated discussion at Articles for deletion/Faithless electors in the United States presidential election, 2016 is dispositive of such proposals. In any case, this aspect of the election is independently notable because it received substantial press coverage, and because it in fact resulted in an unusually large number of faithless electors, including the first such votes cast for an African-American Republican, for a Jewish candidate, for a Native American, for a Green Party candidate, and for an octogenarian. bd2412  T 04:10, 20 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose. There is no shortage of paper. This is big enough and important enough for its own article. EuroAgurbash (talk) 09:35, 20 December 2016 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

RNC
The RNC is stating that they are fairly confident that Republican electors (except for Suprun) will vote for Trump, according to this piece. Not sure how to work that into here. 331dot (talk) 13:09, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Worked it in. The RNC would be stupid not to do what they're doing. kencf0618 (talk) 03:11, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
 * In politics, "would be stupid" <> "is not happening. --Nat Gertler (talk) 14:47, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Reprisal!
Currently, the article makes it sound as if the RNC or Trump's team threatening reprisals is unusual, or a form of coercion. Are editors aware that these electors all took pledges? And that the laws of 29 states and DC threaten electors who violate their pledges with legal reprisals? And that these laws have been found constitutional by SCOTUS? Srnec (talk) 14:26, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Please cite the SCOTUS cases ruling such laws consitutional; most RS are saying these state laws(which are overridden by federal law) have never been tested in court, let alone ruled on by SCOTUS. 331dot (talk) 14:27, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I would add that I believe that it is unusual for a party(any party) to conduct a whip operation for its electors, as typically they are party loyalists. 331dot (talk) 14:28, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
 * You are correct that these laws have not been tested in court. To my knowledge, they have never been enforced because faithless electors have never made a difference. (Ray v. Blair was the case I was misremembering.) Electors, however, are agents of the states, so it is not clear how federal laws could apply.
 * "I believe that it is unusual for a party ... to conduct a whip operation for its electors". Is it? I don't know. Srnec (talk) 14:33, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
 * We need more clarification about the state vis-à-vis federal roles of the electors. That federal law is paramount is a settled matter, but exactly how these circumstances shall be dealt with (if ever) by SCOTUS is a matter that awaits citations. kencf0618 (talk) 01:11, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Likely faithless electors
Aside from the guy in Texas, one Democratic elector in Maine has said they will vote for Bernie Sanders. . I think the faithless votes (which will likely be few) should be listed here(either just the votes or the people making them too). 331dot (talk) 12:12, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
 * That also means that the current state of this article is not NPOV. The intro puts all focus on the "Hamilton Electors" campaign to snatch away Donald Trump's majority, but once the voting's in there may end up being more Clinton electors who faithlessly voted for Bernie Sanders. 2602:30A:2ED1:5E30:8D7D:3AFC:BDF3:690 (talk) 16:46, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
 * That's because until now the focus has been on the Hamilton Electors; once we have actual votes, we can expand the scope and POV of this page to all faithless electors. 331dot (talk) 16:50, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Fine, but it was never NPOV to write it that way in the first place. Until today, only two electors had publicly declared they would not vote for the candidate they were pledged to.  Chris Suprun of Texas, who isn't voting for Trump, is mentioned twice.  But Robert Satiacum of Washington, a Clinton elector, has been saying for weeks that he would never vote for Clinton.  He isn't mentioned at all in this article, even though many news articles have reported on him.  Suprun is quoted in our article claiming he had spoken to other Trump electors who wanted to defect; Satiacum said the same thing about Clinton electors he knew, but isn't quoted.   This is an article that was narrowly conceived ("Hamilton Electors") but slapped a broad title on itself that it didn't live up to.  2602:30A:2ED1:5E30:8D7D:3AFC:BDF3:690 (talk) 17:38, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
 * The beauty of Wikipedia is that, if something like the Dem elector in Washington is missing, it can be added, by you or someone else. I suspect once the voting is over, we will know how to rebalance this page. 331dot (talk) 19:03, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Frankly the whole thing should be junked and relegated to a brief note on the 2016 election article. Since it was written before anything happened, the article's structure and content mostly add up to fanciful wishcasting.  There is, for instance, an entire section devoted to a celebrity YouTube video that had no demonstrable influence on anyone. 2602:30A:2ED1:5E30:8D7D:3AFC:BDF3:690 (talk) 23:42, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Secret voting and Elector Replacement
1. Are electoral college votes secret? 2. If they are secret, how did Colorado officials know which elector to replace? Thorbecke2012 (talk) 02:46, 20 December 2016 (UTC)


 * My understanding is that while the constitution requires electors to cast votes by ballot, whether the ballot is to be secret is a matter of contemporary legal debate, with current practice leaning to non-secret ballots. Tazerdadog (talk) 06:58, 20 December 2016 (UTC)
 * How the ballots are collected are decided by each state. For example, Minnesota used to have secret ballots, but when an elector went faithless in 2004, a law was introduced to make the votes public. Colorado uses public EC voting. --Frmorrison (talk) 15:01, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Texas faithless electors number
The following is written: "In Texas, at least two electors were faithless". Now if I understand it correctly, it should be either two or three. If so should it not be clearer to write something like "In Texas, either two electors or three electors were faithless". It now seems as if the number of faithless electors could have been much higher. Am I correct? AntonHogervorst (talk) 20:58, 20 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Assuming the Austin Ammerican-Statesman is correct, there were only two faithless electors, one of whom voted faithlessly twice (once for President, once for Vice President). I parenthetically added this source's information, rather than change the existing statements, because one contributor explicitly stated that said elector would not confirm or deny. This was not covered in the cited source, but I don't know what the other contributor knows. I leave it to him/her to delete that portion. Anthony22 changed the chart itself.Terr1959 (talk) 00:40, 25 December 2016 (UTC)


 * I didn't write "would not" confirm or deny, I wrote "have not", which was just a different way of expressing the fact article's assertion that it was unknown at the time. Since there's no reason to doubt the Statesman source, I'll rephrase accordingly. – Smyth\talk 15:22, 25 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks for clearing it up. One reference had been dropped (by a wiki-bot?) as not verified and I couldn't check it to know whether an additional article existed specifically stating neither one of them would take credit for the Fiorina vote. I doubted such, given the Statesman's article, but I felt it best to let the original contributor finish cleaning up. It looks pretty much fixed at this point, anyway.Terr1959 (talk) 20:13, 25 December 2016 (UTC)~

Faith Spotted Eagle
Faith Spotted Eagle's wiki page is written with her surname being Spotted Eagle, not Eagle. Which is correct? Spotted Eagle seems more likely to be the correct form. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.102.50.155 (talk) 15:43, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Number of faithless electors
As we don't know if either of the faithless electors in Texas who voted John Kasich and Ron Paul for president, voted for Carly Fiorina for vice president. It's possible that 8 electors voted. GoodDay (talk) 07:15, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

I have found one source (the Austin American-Statesman newspaper's website: Statesman.com) that states that Christopher Suprun voted for Carly Fiorina and William Greene voted for Pence, without ambiguity. On the other hand, while I find any number of sites that state only that Carly Fiorina received one vote for Vice President without mentioning who voted for her, they make no statements regarding why the elector isn't identified. Terr1959 (talk) 20:37, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Was Barry Sanders the first Jewish person to receive an electoral vote?
The contention that Barry Bernie Sanders was the first Jewish person to receive an electoral vote has been removed from the page, first based on the contention that 1964 Republican nominee Barry Goldwater was Jewish (Goldwater's father was Jewish, but he identified as Episcopalian), and then based on the contention that Sanders "doesn't count as Jewish either; he is not religiously Jewish". Sanders is certainly not a Christian, so he's the first of something to receive an electoral vote. How should this be reflected in the article? bd2412 T 14:18, 21 December 2016 (UTC)


 * This is a mistake. It has been long debated whether being Jewish was religious, ethnic, or cultural. Many, many people consider themselves Jewish who are not observant. Though he is not religious at all, doesn't he self-identify as Jewish? I think his Jewishness, no matter how vaguely we define the term, should be restored to the article. Bob Caldwell CSL (talk) 15:24, 21 December 2016 (UTC)


 * The claim that he was the first would, at the very least, need to be sourced. None was given, which brings into question both the statement's accuracy and its import. (Also: it's Bernie Sanders. Goldwater and sometimes Obama are both Barrys, but Bernie is Bernie.) --Nat Gertler (talk) 15:28, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It is a trivial matter to look over the list of every person who has received an electoral vote and see that no previous recipient has identified as Jewish. bd2412  T 16:12, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Is it s "trivial matter"? I can certainly find folks who have gotten electoral votes where their Wikipedia article does not indicate any religious identification. But if the effort is trivial and the information of import, then we would expect some reliable source to have made the effort. --Nat Gertler (talk) 16:26, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I must correct myself. It turns out that the first Jewish person to receive an electoral vote was Tonie Nathan, the 1972 Libertarian vice-presidential candidate. Sanders remains the only Jewish recipient of an electoral vote for the presidency. bd2412  T 16:33, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
 * This article has a similar issue with it List of Jewish political milestones in the United States, it has a reference for Sanders getting an electoral vote for president, but it is not supported by it. I don't see a source claiming that Sanders got the first electoral vote for president as a Jew, I did see some for the NH primary. --Frmorrison (talk) 16:35, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Best to clarify what kind of electoral vote Sanders got. There's been 2 Jews (for example) who've gotten electoral votes for Vice President. Nathan got 1 EV in 1972, wile Lieberman got 266 EV in 2000. GoodDay (talk) 00:02, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

"None of these laws have been been fully vetted by the courts".
I removed this line from the article because the source is now out of date: electors have been replaced in accordance with state law. It is equally true that these laws have not been challenged, and now that they have been applied that is the more notable fact. It is not routine for laws to be "vetted" by courts and it has no bearing on what the law is. The line was restored, but it is still a POV attempt to cast doubt on laws that have been on the books for decades and have now been applied without any fuss. Unless somebody is aware of a challenge to the Republican secretary of state of Colorado's replacement of a Clinton-pledged elector who tried to vote for somebody else? Srnec (talk) 13:47, 22 December 2016 (UTC)


 * The laws were challenged, including in Colorado: see the "Litigation" section. However, I agree that the sentence should be removed, because it implies that the laws are unenforceable unless the courts approve them, when actually the reverse is true. – Smyth\talk 15:41, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

"first and second Native Americans"
"Faith Spotted Eagle and Winona LaDuke (for Vice President) became the first and second Native Americans to have electoral votes cast in their names."
 * This line is incorrect as Charles Curtis, the 31st vice president, was a Native American who won office in the 1928 election.--Countakeshi (talk) 16:41, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I've deleted that claim, as well about Ron Paul being the oldest and Powell being the second African American, as they were not in the source listed (neither the active page pointed to nor the named article that was formerly on that page.) --Nat Gertler (talk) 17:22, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Faithfull to the deceased?
Since Greeley was dead by the time the 1872 Electoral College voted, would not the 63 electors pledged to him voting instead for living alternatives, be technically 'not faithless'? GoodDay (talk) 02:05, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Election of 1836
In 1836, all 23 Virgina electors abstained in the vote for vice president, the only time that faithless electors moved the decision outside of the electoral college. As per Faithless electors, "The loss of Virginia's support caused Johnson to fall one electoral vote short of a majority, causing the vice presidential election to be thrown into the U.S. Senate for the only time in American history." Unscintillating (talk) 16:25, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Badly worded introduction section

 * "The six faithless vice-presidential votes in 2016 is also short of the record for that office; without considering whether the vice-presidential candidates were still living; as multiple previous elections have had more than six faithless vice-presidential votes; and in 1836, faithless electors successfully moved the vice-presidential decision to the U.S. Senate."

With three semicolons, this is definitely a run-on. It really needs to be changed and replaced in order to flow better, and it's very hard to decipher from one reading what it means, IMHO. Comments? Suggestions? Thank you. BETTERmaid (talk) 00:33, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

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Protest at reversion
You reverted my edit, saying that the information shouldn't be in the lede. I disagreed with deleting the information, and put it back, requesting you to put it somewhere else if you want. But then you reverted that, saying I can't revert a reversion! But you just did that -- you reverted my reversion. I don't agree with the idea that you can just revert something, and then force the person who did that edit to discuss on the talk page. I know from experience that these discussions on talk pages usually don't come to a consensus, so whoever did the reversion wins! I don't see why you can't do as I asked and put the information somewhere else in the article if that's what you think. But now you have changed your argument and you're saying that it's not "encyclopedic" and that the information is found elsewhere. No it's not! That's why I added it! If you don't think it's "encyclopedic" (whatever that means), then rewrite it in a better way! I don't see why you force your will like this. Please Ping me. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 09:05, 14 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The bold-revert-discuss cycle is important, otherwise people just edit war. I did add the information about the Faith Spotted Eagle vote to the lead, because that elector really wasn't associated with the Hamilton electors and this information was indeed missing from the article. There were 3 electors who voted for Bernie Sanders, only one of which was counted; I think it's self evident that these electors supported Bernie Sanders and the details of these votes (from which states, and which one was successful) are found in the body of the article. I think it's unclear from the reporting to what extent these electors were separate from the Hamilton electors; in other words, it's unclear if these electors would have defected from Clinton in protest if there weren't already a movement for electors to be faithless. If there is sourcing discussing their motives, I'd support adding a section in the article discussing the non-Hamilton electors specifically. But I think we should keep the lead to four paragraphs per MOS:LEDE, as this article really isn't large enough to justify exceeding that. Mdewman6 (talk) 19:05, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I wanted to know why those electors in Washington defected from Hillary, and our article didn't say. So I had to start looking in the references to find some explanation. Once I did, I put it into our article. Without that, our article doesn't give any indication, except for the one who voted for the Indian. But I'm not going to keep arguing. I have other things to do. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 13:26, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * As I said above, if you would like to add a paragraph discussing the electors who did not vote (or attempt to vote) for alternative Republicans, go for it, and I and/or others can do copy editing and whatnot to better integrate it. I originally objected to the addition to the lead, its phrasing, and it containing redundant information. I apologize for reverting your edit rather than trying to incorporate it right away (not following my own advice), but here we are discussing it, and there is nothing wrong with that. I don't feel this is an argument, we are reaching consensus on improving the article, as intended, even if it's less straightforward than desired. I share your frustration with talk pages, as comments are often ignored, or people dominate the discussion and repeat their points of view ad nauseum to the point nobody else can determine what is going on and participate. But it doesn't have to be that way. Anyone reverting an edit is obligated to join whatever discussions develop on the talk pages. Mdewman6 (talk) 21:08, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the reply. But I do have other things to do, so I will leave all that to others to do. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 17:16, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

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