Joe Biden was declared the winner
of the 2020 presidential election.
But outgoing president, Donald "Jigglypuff" Trump,
is still looking for ways to overturn the results.
Recounts haven't worked for him.
Legal challenges haven't worked for him.
And he even tried signing an executive order
that November 3rd was opposite day,
but somehow, that didn't work.
But it turns out there is one more thing that Trump could try.
Could faithless electors save president Trump's reelection?
NEWSWOMAN 2: Some Republicans trying
to get faithless electors
to vote against the will of the people.
President Trump's allies and his family today
urged Republican state legislatures
to ignore the will of voters in their states
and to install electors that will cast electoral votes
for President Trump.
Yeah, even though Trump lost the election,
some of his people are hoping
that he could pull out a win by using faithless electors.
And although "faithless electors" sounds like one of
your auntie's grown-up novels, they're not.
And look, please don't get me wrong.
This would be a long shot, a long shot.
Like, it's-it's about as likely
as Mitch McConnell being on the cover of Men's Health.
But theoretically,
faithless electors could give Trump the presidency.
So the question is: who are they? What are they?
And how can they be used to overturn the election?
Well, let's find out in another installment
of "If You Don't Know, Now You Know."
♪ ♪
When you were a little kid,
you probably believed that people vote for president,
and whoever gets the most votes wins.
Yeah? Simple child mind.
The same way you believed
that your younger brother was brought by the stork.
But once you got older, you learned that, actually,
your mom and dad were riding the F-train to Bone Town.
Because Bone Town is where the stork lives,
and that's how they got your little brother.
And in the same way, the system for electing a president
in America is more complex than just "one-person, one-vote,"
because, you see, America's Founding Fathers wanted
to come up with something
that would prevent their biggest fear:
the people choosing someone terrible.
The Electoral College is a sort of glued-together solution
to a problem that the Constitutional Convention
couldn't really solve.
WOMAN: They said, "Should the Congress elect the president?"
"No. If they do that,
then the Congress will own the presidency."
WOMAN 2: Another option was
to have the people select their leader.
But at the time, they thought the country was too large,
and the people not informed enough to make that choice.
WOMAN 3: And one of the odd compromises
that they came up with was actually using
this set of political elites
to do the actual voting for president, but still
providing a mechanism to select those-those electors.
They thought by creating this wise group of elites,
these electors could filter popular passions.
They were afraid of a demagogue being chosen.
They mistrusted direct democracy.
MAN 3: Alexander Hamilton wrote
that the goal was to ensure that,
"The office of president will never fall
"to the lot of any man
"who is not in an eminent degree endowed
with the requisite qualifications."
That's right. According to Alexander Hamilton...
(clears throat)
(rapping): ♪ "The office of the president will never fall ♪
♪ "To the lot of any man who is not ♪
♪ In an imminent degree endowed... ♪
Damn. I should make a musical out of this.
Did you guys hear this?!
But the point is, Americans don't vote for the president.
Americans vote for a slate of electors
who will then go on to vote for the president.
In many ways, it's the same way
that American high school kids don't buy the beer.
They give the homeless man money,
and then he goes to buy the beer on their behalf.
That way, it's more responsible.
And it's amazing how, if you read into it,
the Founding Fathers really thought
that everyone in the country was super dumb.
'Cause everyone talks about how they wanted
to build a new, perfect society,
when really, they were just
basically installing childproofing
to keep the country safe and stop Americans from eating sand.
Now, this whole idea of electors being smarter
than the masses fell by the wayside pretty quickly.
And one of the main reasons for doing this was because
they thought a lot of Americans wouldn't know enough
about the candidates to vote for them.
But, you see, that was hundreds of years ago
when information was harder to come by.
Like, you only found out news
when someone delivered it by horse.
But now, we've got the Internet, people.
We're... Everyone's super informed.
Like, everyone in America.
We all know things. Just look at my phone.
I... like, I know that Hunter Biden moved to Russia
and sold his laptop to Rudy Giuliani for drugs.
I know that Hillary Clinton is in a pedophile ring,
and they drink the blood of children.
And I know that Melania has a body double
who's having an affair... with Gary Busey? Huh.
Actually, you know what?
May-Maybe we should go back to the horse.
I-I don't know about this Internet thing.
But the point is, today it's understood
that a state's electors will vote for the candidate
who won their state's popular vote.
The only problem is,
that's just an understanding.
It's not an actual law.
NEWSWOMAN: According to the National Archives,
there is no constitutional provision or federal law
that requires electors to vote according to their results
of the popular vote in their state.
Those who don't follow the wish, the will of the electorate--
they're called "faithless electors."
NEWSMAN 2: In 2016, four of the 12 electors in Washington
decided not to vote for Hillary Clinton,
despite Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote in that state.
Instead, three voted for Colin Powell,
and one voted for the Native American activist
Faith Spotted Eagle.
NEWSWOMAN 2: It isn't a new concept.
According to FairVote,
there have been 167 faithless electors
since the Electoral College was founded.
43% changed their vote
because the candidate they were supposed to vote for died
before the Electoral College could vote.
40% who chose to vote for the candidate they wanted,
rather than matching the popular vote.
17% either didn't vote or cast an abnormal ballot.
NEWSMAN 3: In the 2004 election, rather than casting their vote
for John Kerry, the unknown elector cast their vote
for Kerry's V.P., John Edwards,
and also misspelled Edward's name as "Ewards."
Wow. So the Founders just let electors do
whatever they want.
They can choose someone the people didn't vote for.
They can vote for a third party.
Then can even just vote for a typo.
I can't believe what a giant flaw
in the American electoral system this is.
It's like finding out that they keep a key to Fort Knox
under the doormat.
And just, by the way, I don't know
if we should be holding voters accountable
for the correct spelling of names.
I don't think that's fair, especially in a country
that's got a hundred different ways to spell "Allison."
How do you have four "L"s in your name, Allllison?
Now, a lot of people do realize that this system is a problem.
In fact, states were recently given the power
to require electors to follow the will of the people.
Unfortunately, very few of them actually do.
In the past term, the Supreme Court upheld the right
of the states to insist that electors vote
for the person who won the popular vote.
But here's the deal.
Only 14 of the 50 states
actually have that legal requirement.
In those 14 states, if a faithless elector goes rogue,
the state can throw them out on the street
and get somebody else in to vote according to the popular vote.
But in all the rest of the states, uh,
if a faithless elector goes off on their own toot,
there's nothing the state can do about it except fine them.
Really?
Electors can subvert the will of the voters
and undermine the foundations of democracy,
and their punishment is the same
as parking in front of a fire hydrant?
In fact, parking in front of a hydrant is even worse,
because you don't just get a fine. You'll also get towed.
I mean, charging someone $1,000 for giving the presidency
to someone doesn't mean that they won't do it.
It just means the bidding starts at $1,000.
Now, the good news is, Trump is down so many electors
that it's unlikely he can convince enough of them
to turn against their state's voters and vote for him.
But the bad news is, it's easy to see
how a future election could be close enough
that the losing candidate could convince enough electors
to make them the winning candidate.
And it would be totally legal.
So, just a warning to all the states out there.
You guys might want to firm up your laws
about faithless legislators, you know,
because Trump might not succeed this time,
but it's only a matter of time before Dumb, Jr. runs.
And God help us all
if that chinless mother(bleep) ever gets into the White House.
So, those are the electors,
and that's how they can change the game.
And if you don't know, now you know.