Word: electorate
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...someone be an elector more than once? For example...
...Glasser: As far as I know, we can - I've been an elector before...
Slade: I've been an elector on four separate occasions...
...electors vote how they please? A. Twenty-six states have no requirement that electors vote in accordance with the popular vote. Nineteen states and D.C. mandate that they vote in accordance with the popular vote, but there's no penalty if an elector fails to do so. Only five states have penalties for deviating from the popular vote. But in most of those states, the sanctions are relatively minor - in Oklahoma, for instance, it's a $1,000 fine. Of the states that are currently in some dispute, Florida, Iowa and New Hampshire don't try to bind their electors...
...There is a simpler reform that would ensure the popular-vote winner a majority in the electoral college: award a bonus of 102 electoral votes, two for each state and for the District of Columbia, to the winner of the popular vote. Under this reform, there would remain a temptation to bring moral pressure on individual electors to reject the decisions of their states and shift their votes to the popular-vote winners. This invokes the myth that the founding fathers expected the electors to be free agents. The evidence is that the founders fully expected the electoral college...