AP: Washington Democratic elector says he will not vote for Clinton

[Lyin' Steve]

Wow. What a self-righteous douche. What a smack in the face to the 52% of Washingtonians - a group disproportionately composed of women and minorities - who voted for Clinton in the primary.

48% of Washington Democrats wanted Bernie, is it too much to ask for one, just one elector, 8% of the total electors, to represent their voices?  That seems pretty fair to me, unless you think their voices do not deserve to be heard.

Read in Bernie's voice.

[Lyin' Steve]

This is some real selfishness on his part. He can cast his regular vote based on how he feels about the candidates. The electoral college vote is supposed to validate the will of the people, not serve as his protest mechanism. If he can't do what is required of him, he should step down.

And he shouldn't be hoping more people do this, either. No electors should be casting protest votes. They need to respect the people's votes. If the state says to vote according to the PV of their state/CD, then that is what they should do. If they can't, step down. That applies to electors for Trump as well.

Just another reason we need to abolish the EC. We can't have people like this hijacking the EC to drive their own agenda.

Actually when the drafters put together the Constitution, they specifically intended for the electors to vote freely and unbound in case some issue should arise. At one point the Convention considered having Congress elect the president, but they didn't want the President to be overly indebted to Congress. That led to the EC which functions as a temporary, shadow Congress to elect the Pres/VP. Protest votes by electors contrary to the statewide vote would be completely consistent with the intent.

There's no actual issue with Clinton, though.  He's just voting this way because he wants to protest against her, waaah waah Bernie didn't win, and he doesn't think she cares enough about "native American issues" (the new "income inequality" and "corporate greed" super-vague umbrella that Bernie's people just use to self-righteously accuse "corporate Dems" of not caring enough about).  The founders didn't intend for the electoral college to be some whiner putting in a protest vote because he personally doesn't like the candidate that won.  It was supposed to be for cases like if Aaron Burr had been elected president and done all his crazy stuff, or if Trump is convicted of raping little girls between now and January.  Or cases like when Horace Greeley died.