Faithless Elector - History

History

In more than 150 instances, electors have cast their votes for President or Vice President in a manner different from that prescribed by the legislature of the state they represented. Of those, 71 votes were changed because the original candidate died before the elector was able to cast a vote. Two votes were not cast at all when electors chose to abstain from casting their electoral vote for any candidate. The remaining 85 were changed by the elector's personal interest, or perhaps by accident. Usually, the faithless electors act alone. An exception was the U.S. presidential election of 1836, in which 23 Virginia electors conspired to change their vote together.

As of the 2008 presidential election, there has been only one occasion when faithless electors prevented an expected winner from winning the electoral college vote: in December 1836, twenty-three faithless electors prevented Richard Mentor Johnson, the expected candidate, from winning the Vice Presidency. However, Johnson was promptly elected Vice President by the U.S. Senate in February 1837; therefore, faithless electors have never changed the expected final outcome of the entire election process.