How One Elector Could Yet Tilt U.S. Election
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Could one vote make a difference in this year’s presidential race? Richard Robb’s might.
In June, the West Virginia Republican Party named Mr. Robb, who has served for 28 years as mayor of South Charleston, as one of five GOP presidential electors. If President Bush wins the popular vote in West Virginia, the Republican slate becomes the state’s electors and they go on to cast their electoral votes for Mr. Bush.
At least, that’s the way the party expected it to play out until Mr. Robb told reporters in his home state last week that he has doubts about Mr. Bush and may not be able to support his candidacy.
“I have misgivings,” Mr. Robb said in a phone interview with The New York Sun. “I am concerned about where the country is going.”
To win the presidency, a candidate must receive a majority – at least 270 – of the 538 electoral votes, which are allocated based on each state’s number of senators and House members in Washington. If no candidate gets a majority, the Constitution dictates that the House of Representatives decides who becomes president.
Mr. Robb, 58, said he has long had concerns about the administration’s fiscal policies and the decision to go to war in Iraq. He said he voiced those concerns at GOP gatherings early last year.
“I’m not one to sit back if I believe something – to keep quiet,” Mr. Robb said. “They appointed me knowing I had specific objections.”
Mr. Robb, who ran unsuccessfully this year for the party’s nomination for governor, said his doubts about Mr. Bush intensified after some veterans and conservative activists questioned the military credentials of the Democratic nominee for president, Senator Kerry of Massachusetts.
“That angered me,” said Mr. Robb, who was awarded a Bronze Star in the Vietnam War. “I felt that was completely uncalled for, particularly in light of the fact that President Bush did not serve in Vietnam.”
Mr. Bush has described Mr. Kerry’s service as “honorable” and the Bush campaign has denied any connection to the group that leveled the allegations, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Mr. Robb said he does not believe the denials.
“Rubbish, that’s my answer to that,” Mr. Robb said. He stressed that he has made no final decision on whom to support this fall. He also said he is “highly unlikely” to vote for Mr. Kerry.
GOP leaders are red-faced about the possible defection, a phenomenon known to political scientists and history buffs as the “faithless elector.” The chairman of the state party, Kris Warner, said he had hoped to strengthen party unity by making each of the losing candidates for governor an elector.
“It was very popular at the time,” Mr. Warner said, adding that he hopes Mr. Robb will come around. “He likes to stand on the outside and lob hand grenades in and stir things up. I’ve always known Mayor Robb to do the right thing at the end of the day.”
The laws of 26 states require presidential electors to vote for a specific candidate. The laws of 24 other states, including New York and West Virginia, have no explicit requirement.
Polls suggest Mr. Bush is likely to win West Virginia. Some GOP activists there have suggested that if he wins, the party could hold another convention to name new electors. State law appears to require that the slate be finalized by the August before the election.
Mr. Robb said lawyers have given him conflicting advice about the situation and about whether he must cast his electoral vote for Mr. Bush.
“I don’t know what my responsibilities and my obligations are,” he said.
If this fall’s election is a blowout, Mr. Robb’s indecision may become little more than a historical footnote. But if the results are close, even one or two wobbly electors could throw the process into turmoil.
“In that case, you’d have the mother of all constitutional law battles,” said an electoral college expert at Claremont Graduate University, Michael Uhlmann.
In 2000, Mr. Bush received 271 electoral votes, just one more than the minimum number needed to win the presidency. If Mr. Robb ultimately withholds his electoral vote or switches candidates, he will join a surprisingly long list of electors who have either had second thoughts about their candidate or tried to turn their vote into some sort of protest. Still, no faithless elector has ever affected the outcome of an election.
The earliest instance of a faithless elector was in 1796. Samuel Miles of Pennsylvania switched his vote from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, prompting some anger.
In 1820, William Plummer of New Hampshire, like every other elector, was pledged to James Monroe. Apparently out of a conviction that no one other than George Washington should receive a unanimous vote of the electoral college, Plummer gave his vote to John Quincy Adams.
The 19th century saw several group defections of electors. In 1836, all of Virginia’s 23 electors refused to vote for the Democratic vice presidential candidate, Richard Johnson, because he fathered two children with African-American woman. The electors denied Johnson a majority, but the Senate ultimately voted him into the vice presidency.
In some instances, the electors’ decisions to abandon their candidate have been difficult to question. In 1872, 63 Democratic electors withheld votes pledged to newspaper editor Horace Greeley, who had died a few weeks after the election.
In recent years, electoral college surprises have involved lone straying electors. In 1976, an elector for Gerald Ford voted instead for Ronald Reagan in a convoluted protest of Jimmy Carter’s stance on abortion. In 2000, an elector from the District of Columbia abstained to protest the city’s lack of representation in the House and Senate.
West Virginia legislators cannot claim total surprise that the state’s laws appear to allow Mr. Robb to vote the way he wants. In 1988, a Democratic elector from West Virginia flipped the Democratic ticket, voting for Senator Bentsen of Texas as president and Michael Dukakis as vice president. She said she did it to protest West Virginia’s lack of a law binding electors to vote for the winner of the election.
Mr. Warner said he recently heard from some state legislators who want to fix the perceived problem. “Now this has happened on both sides,” he said.
Mr. Robb’s said his public expressions of doubt about his vote have led some of his neighbors to turn on him.
“I’ve had some people who have been pretty nasty to me. I’ve been accosted in public,” he said. “As long as they’re civil about it, that’s their right.”
Mr. Robb said he’s made no final decision but that the criticism only makes it more likely that he’ll withhold his vote for Mr. Bush. “One thing it’s done is get my Appalachian spine fortified,” he said.