The Electoral College Should be Faithful to its Constitutional Duty by Not Electing Someone Unworthy of Trust

The presidential and vice-presidential Electors should be faithful to the United States Constitution in fulfilling their constitutional duties when they convene and vote on Tuesday. They have been appointed by the State Legislatures, after having been elected by the people, to elect the President and Vice President. In their role as representative of the States and the People, their duty is to exercise their best judgment in good conscience because the U.S. is a federal union that is representative, not democratic, meaning that representatives are chosen to exercise their judgement, instead of people ruling directly. The Electoral College was modeled on the College of Cardinals that elects the Catholic Bishop of Rome and intended by the Framers as a deliberative body of representatives, not as simply a form of proportional proxy voting by the people directly for their preferred candidates. The Electors were originally either appointed or, if elected, were elected directly in their own right, at a time when no one sought election and no names were printed on ballots, instead of under the name of candidates for President and Vice President and when there was not necessarily consensus among members of parties for candidates for both offices. Electors were expected to deliberate and choose which candidates were fit to be entrusted with high office. They should be more faithful to their constitutional role than to their party and its preferred candidates. Therefore, the Electoral College ought not to elect someone, namely Donald Trump, who dodged the military draft in wartime through fraud and never apologized for it, who was convicted of election fraud felonies and remains unrepentant, and who was impeached in the most bipartisan vote and who received the most bipartisan votes for conviction in American history for attempting to overturn his election loss by inciting a mob to insurrection based upon his lies, which delayed the congressional certification of the votes of the Electors, among the most serious examples of many of his poor character that would render him unable to pass even the lowest level of security clearance, without even considering his theft of secret documents and obstruction of the investigation, which earned him some of his numerous federal indictments. His obstruction of the federal probe of the successful foreign interference on behalf of his campaign that he welcomed and accepted, for which the Republican Special Counsel recommended he be impeached, ought to have been reason enough to keep him from any public office. By inciting a mob to violence to thwart the certification of the votes of the Electors, Trump demonstrated his contempt for the Electoral College, the Constitution, and the peaceful transfer of power that renders him unfit to serve as Commander in Chief and to hold the highest office and trust in America, which he betrayed. The Electoral College has been usurped by political parties who have sought to render it no more than a mechanism to prevent candidates from being elected by large States or only from some regions, instead of its intended purpose as a forum for the representatives of the States and People to render their judgment. Trumpist “conservatives” claim to support the Electoral College, but undermine its role when they expect the Electors to suspend their independent judgment and their consciences and instead to act in loyalty to an autocratic party leader around whom his party has established a cult of personality. The role of the Electors is not to submit to a party or a politician, but to be faithful to the Constitution and elect someone worthy of trust to the highest offices in the land that were created under it who can be a faithful steward of representative government and safeguard of liberty.