How Clinton could still end up in the White House
As people try to come to terms with election results, there is still one long shot way that Hillary Clinton could win the presidency: the Electoral College.
As people are still trying to come to terms with the election results, there is still one long shot way that Hillary Clinton could win the presidency: the Electoral College.
After all, the United States is not a pure democracy. While the people cast their votes, they are actually electing electors for the Electoral College, who are the ones to actually cast their votes for the president. Typically, electors in the Electoral College are expected to vote for whoever their state voted for, but there are only 29 states that bar their electors from going against the will of the people.
–Clinton concedes: ‘This is painful and will be for long time’–
The process is called becoming a “faithless” elector, and it is incredibly rare. The last time an elector went faithless was in 2004 when an elector voted for John Kerry’s running mate, John Edwards, instead of Kerry himself. However, the vote was a ceremonial one, because Bush already had enough electoral votes to win the presidency.
This is not the first time the idea of turning to the Electoral College has come up in the wake of the results of a presidential election. The idea was also bandied about during the highly controversial and closely called 2000 election. But it’s still a long shot.
Still, given the unpopularity of the president-elect, it’s a shot many are willing to take.
