Tennessee Electors: We're Being 'Harassed'

NASHVILLE, TN — Tennessee's members of the Electoral College tell The Tennessean they are being sent hundreds of "harassing" emails asking them not to vote for Donald Trump or to abstain when they convene to cast their ballots December 19.

Several of the nine electors told the newspaper they have received as many as 200 emails per day and even a handful of phone calls. Clarksville's Pat Allen, who will represent the 7th Congressional District when the electors meet in Nashville next month, said it took her an hour to delete the emails but that she has not considered changing her vote.

"There's no amount of money you could pay me to (change my vote)," Lynne Davis, an Electoral College member from Lascassas, told The Tennessean.

Tennessee, like 28 other states and the District of Columbia, have laws punishing so-called faithless electors — electors who cast votes counter to how their state voted in the presidential election — usually with a small fine. Instances of faithless electors are rare — it's happened 157 times in American history — and only once, in 1836, did it truly effect the outcome. In that year, Virginia's 23 electors abstained from voting for vice-presidential candidate Richard Mentor Johnson as a protest against his open and admitted affair with a slave. That threw the determination to the Senate, which ultimately voted for Johnson anyway.

In any event, despite the numerous laws punishing faithless electors, none have ever been prosecuted and many legal scholars believe the laws are unconstitutional. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 68, the intent of the Electoral College is to provide a final check against the possibility of a demagogue rising to power on the back of public popularity, saying that the college would be able to keep a candidate with “Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity” from becoming President.

Most of the emails and calls argue Trump is unfit for the presidency, though some point to the likelihood Hillary Clinton will end up with more popular votes; however, since both campaigns, and indeed all campaigns throughout American history, built strategies based on winning the Electoral College, it is impossible to predict the vote count in a popular election.

Image via Patch staff.