Nearly six months after the Colorado statehouse became the unlikely stage for a dramatic attempt to deny Donald Trump the presidency, Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams is looking to prevent a repeat performance of last year’s Electoral College theatrics.
A proposed policy change would require Colorado presidential electors to take an oath swearing to back the winner of the state’s popular vote or be replaced by someone who will. The rule parallels an emergency protocol adopted in December that was aimed at defusing a planned Electoral College revolt led in part by Colorado’s Democratic electors.
“People need to have confidence in the elections process,” Williams told The Denver Post in an interview this week. “Who cares about hacking the election if the elector can just do whatever they flipping feel like when the votes take place?”
The rule was a response to the national Hamilton Electors movement, which had sought to convince enough Republican electors to vote for someone other than Trump that it would prevent him from clearing the 270 electoral-vote threshold needed to win.
Colorado quickly emerged as a national focal point for the broader movement, with two of the state’s Democratic electors suing in federal court to unbind their votes from the November election results and allow them to vote their conscience. A third elector, Micheal Baca, followed through a plan with other electors in several states to vote for a third candidate and force an Electoral College deadlock.
That movement, of course, failed. But it briefly set off a national debate over the role of the Electoral College — one that quietly continues in federal court today — even as Williams pushes forward with the stricter rules.
History is dotted with so-called “faithless electors,” but they’re exceedingly rare, in large part because they’re chosen by the same party that nominated the candidate they’re supposed to vote for in any given state.
Today, Colorado and at least 28 other states have laws binding electors to the popular vote. It’s those laws that are at issue in ongoing court challenges in Colorado and California.
“I remain adamant that (these laws) are unconstitutional and are an affront to the Electoral College’s fundamental purposes as a safety valve and check on popular opinion,” Jason Wesoky, a Denver-based attorney for the Hamilton Electors, wrote in an email. “One need not be a constitutional scholar to understand that requiring electors to vote for a specific candidate renders the electors superfluous, pointless and redundant.”
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, even as it ripped the Hamilton Electors lawsuit as a “political stunt,” appeared to give a glimmer of hope to their cause. In a footnote to an opinion, which ruled against an injunction request by the electors, the federal judges suggested that attempts by the secretary of state to remove electors could be unconstitutional.
Williams disagrees — and he doesn’t see the point in waiting for the court challenges to play out before making the rule permanent.
“The rules simply follow up with what the (state) law is,” said Williams, a Republican. “That’s been blessed by every court that’s reviewed them since their adoption.”
The language is tucked away in 22 pages of proposed election rule changes, the bulk of which are aimed at implementing the state’s new semi-open primaries. There’s a July 11 hearing to review the proposed rules, which do not require legislative approval.
Meanwhile, there has been no official word on a state attorney general’s investigation into Baca’s vote, which may still be ongoing. Wesoky confirmed that other electors had been interviewed as a part of the investigation. A spokeswoman for Attorney General Cynthia Coffman’s office did not return a message seeking comment.
