On March 18, the Montana House Administration Committee passed SB 194 unanimously. The bill had already passed the Senate. It requires political parties, and independent presidential candidates, to submit twice as many candidates for presidential elector as the state has votes in the Electoral College. For each seat, there will be one presidential elector and one alternate political elector. If the original elector is elected and votes for someone for president in the Electoral College whom his or her party had not nominated, that elector is deemed to have resigned and the alternate takes the position.
Similar bills in Indiana and Nebraska are now dead for this year, because neither one of the bills in those states advanced by the deadlines. Those bills are SB 75 in Indiana and LB 367 in Nebraska.
There was opposition to the bill so I don’t know why everyone liked the bill. This bill increases the scope of government and signing a so-called loyalty oath seemed like something from the 50’s.
Each Elector signs a contract with the voters who elected this representative of the candidate for president. This recourse makes a lot of sense to remove the Faithless Presidential Elector who violated the contract.
In California we are addressing this subject with a proposed initiative #10-00224 that is now in circulation.
Website: ElectoralReformCalifornia.com
I just don’t see any problems with the current system. Also when you have more paperwork it could cause problems for the presidential candidate if paperwork is not submitted on time or is missing a certain element, like forgetting to sign the oath. The group pushing this legislation are all lawyers and that troubles me as there is an agenda there. Because what this law says is that if say John McCain had an affair during the campaign, after I was vote to become an elector and it was against my ethics, I would still be required to vote for McCain and if I couldn’t then I would be replaced. What if all the electors felt the same way. I don’t see faithless electors as a problem, therefore the law is just a waste of the legislature’s time when people are hoping the legislature will work on jobs and getting government out of the way.