Noah Feldman, Columnist

Put Faith in Constitution, Not 'Democracy'

Now is not the time to subvert the Electoral College.

November 28, 2016 at 4:52 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Not exactly.
Photographer: Mark Makela/Getty Images

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When my colleague Lawrence Lessig argued at Medium that members of the Electoral College should break faith and vote for Hillary Clinton instead of Donald Trump, I chalked it up to the brilliantly contrarian Larry being brilliant and contrarian -- even if wrong. But when, over the holiday weekend, the Washington Post published his op-ed making the same argument, it made me think serious people might take his argument seriously -- which would be dangerous for democracy and bad for the republic. So with great respect for Larry’s ideals and values, here’s why faithless electors would subvert, not sustain, the democratic values that underlie the U.S. presidential election system.

Start with a thought experiment: What if Donald Trump had won the popular vote and lost in the Electoral College? How would Democrats respond if prominent scholars and public figures argued that Clinton’s electors should break their pledges and elect Trump?