Spin Control: Next big event in the presidential election contest is Tuesday

The next phase of the nation’s presidential election – and typically one of the least exciting – is set for Tuesday when Electoral College delegations meet to cast their state’s votes for president.

They meet in their respective state capitals at noon. In Washington, the 12 electors are expected to hear a speech or two commending them for being part of the constitutional democratic process before taking some official votes and filling out the paperwork to cast the state’s votes for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

With the primaries, the conventions, general election, Electoral College and the Official Congressional Vote Count on Jan.6, the race for the White House is more like a pentathlon than a marathon. And some events are more exciting than others.

Like most election cycles, the winner of the presidential race is known long before the Electoral College meets, so its actions are duly recorded, forwarded to the other Washington, and the tally shows up on various charts and graphs that provide an official record of presidential elections back to 1789.

Washington didn’t get a piece of the action until 1892, three years after becoming a state. Since that time, it has given its Electoral College votes to 19 Democrats, 14 Republicans and one third-party candidate, Progressive Theodore Roosevelt, in 1912. It went for a string of Republicans from 1972 to 1984, but since 1988 has been reliably Democratic.

Viewed another way, the majority of the state voted for 24 candidates who became president and 10 who did not.

While the process rarely generates much excitement, there is sometimes a twist or turn.

In 2020, in the midst of the COVID pandemic, masked electors were moved from the Capitol’s State Reception Room, where they had met for several cycles, to the more spacious Senate Chamber. It allowed them to spread out among the rows of desks and maintain a quarantine-safe distance from each other.

Although some states won by Joe Biden had attempts by “fake electors” to cast ballots for Donald Trump, Washington is so reliably Democratic that no such effort was even suggested.

It did have a problem with “faithless electors” in 2016. Several Democratic electors who were pledged to Hillary Clinton decided to try trading their votes with Republican electors willing to withhold their votes for Trump in states where he won.

In the days leading up to the Electoral College meeting, a group that called itself the “Hamilton Electors,” seemed to talk a good game. But it got little interest from Trump electors.

Because each state’s Electoral College meets at noon locally, by the time Washington’s electors convened most of the other states were finished and Trump had the votes he needed to be president. Four Washington electors decided to vote for someone else anyway – three for Colin Powell and one for Faith Spotted Eagle, a Native American activist.

That ran them afoul of the state’s Faithless Elector statute, which said any elector who does not cast his or her vote for the person who won the majority of the state’s popular vote is subject to a fine of $1,000. They were fined. Three of them refused to pay, saying the state can’t make them to vote a certain way. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In July 2020 – just months before the next presidential balloting started – a unanimous court said a state definitely can require an elector to cast their Electoral College vote for the person who won the majority in that state.

By that time, however, the Legislature had changed state law to say a faithless elector who tries to vote for someone other than the winner of the state’s popular vote is simply removed and replaced with an alternate who will vote for the designated candidate. It was easier than trying to collect the money and kept Washington from having an asterisk by its tally.

The four faithless Clinton voters weren’t the first electors in the state who voted for someone other than their party’s nominee. Forty years earlier, when President Gerald Ford carried the state but finished behind Jimmy Carter, a Republican elector cast his vote for Ronald Reagan, who had lost the nomination to Ford after a tough primary. The young Spokane attorney, who was opposed to abortion, preferred Reagan’s stance on the issue.

At the time, the state had no penalties for such an action, so the elector, wasn’t fined. Unlike the four electors in 2016, it didn’t even hurt his standing in the party. Mike Padden was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1980, the same year Reagan did win the White House. He spent 14 years in the House, served as a Spokane County District Court judge for 12 years, and later served 13 in the state Senate, announcing his retirement just this spring. He was recently named a special adviser to U.S. Rep. Mike Baumgartner, who in making the announcement mentioned Padden’s electoral vote.

The Faithless Elector statute will probably keep Washington electors from going rogue and voting for someone their party didn’t nominate. But some day, the state’s electors might not be voting for the candidate who got the most votes in Washington.

A law passed in 2009 says that if states with a majority of the Electoral College votes agree to award their electors to the candidate who wins the most votes nationwide, and that candidate’s party will send its electors to the December meeting. It’s a way of ensuring the winner of the Electoral College is also the winner of the popular vote.

So far, similar laws have passed in states with 209 electoral votes, which is 61 short of the number needed. Like Washington, those states have reliably voted Democrat for the last couple of elections, which is not surprising considering Democrats have been the ones the most steamed about being kept out of the White House after winning a majority of the popular vote in 2000 and 2016.

They may be rethinking their support, however. Were the system in place right now, 17 states – including California, New York and Illinois – which went for Harris would be casting electoral votes for Trump. Even though he just missed getting a majority of the popular vote, he’d have a landslide in the Electoral College.

And voters in those states would have a new reason to argue that their vote didn’t matter.

Watch it live

Like 2020, Washington 2024 meeting of its Electoral College will take place at noon in the state Senate Chambers, although this time its for security and the ability to use the television feed in that chamber. It will be shown live on TVW’s local cable channel and on tvw.org.