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Elected by the electorial college, not by the people.
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Yep. But the vast majority of the time, they vote for the candidate they are pledged to. In any event, no one seems to have a problem with the electoral college enough to try to remove it. The only time it is ever an issue is when their own candidate loses. Even after Bush's first election, I didnt see any big push from the liberals to remove it.
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Originally Posted by Wikipedia
On 157 occasions from 1796–2004, presidential electors have cast their vote in a different manner than that prescribed by the popular election results for the state or district they represent. Of those, 71 votes were changed because the original candidate died before the elector was able to cast a vote. Three votes were not cast at all when Electors chose to abstain from casting their Electoral vote for any candidate. The remaining 83 were changed by the elector's personal interest or perhaps by accident. Usually, the faithless electors act alone. An exception was in 1836 when 23 Virginia electors changed their vote together. Still, no faithless elector has ever changed the outcome of any election.
There are laws to punish faithless electors in 24 states. While no faithless elector has ever been punished, the constitutionality of state pledge laws was brought before the Supreme Court in 1952 (Ray v. Blair, 343 US 214). The court ruled in favor of state's right to legally require electors to vote as pledged, as well as remove electors who refuse to pledge. As stated in the ruling, electors are acting as a function of the state, not the federal government. Therefore, states have the right to govern electors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._El...e#How_it_works
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There is a lot of information on the Electoral College on that site, including a detailed list of Pros and Cons.