How a single rogue elector could flip the presidential election

Joe Biden and Donald Trump are neck and neck in national polls. Biden doesn’t need to win as many states as he did last time to be reelected. That’s a good thing for the Biden campaign, because he almost certainly won’t. 

Trump is ahead by 4 percentage points or more in Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina and Nevada, all crucial swing states, according to RCP averages. Biden’s best hope for reelection is through a clean sweep of the Rust Belt: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. He has a decent chance to do just that, as he is currently statistically tied in polling averages for all three states.

But if all goes according to plan, and the president is able to pull off this impressive sweep, Biden would not be out of the woods. He would still have to worry about pesky rogue electors. 

The Electoral College is not the faceless “race to 270” that cable news portrays it to be. Each number is a vote, and each vote is cast by an elector: a real person with real decision-making power. While the tallies on the screen may seem definite, they are actually anything but certain. 

In 2016, 10 “faithless electors” tried to cast ballots at the official Electoral College vote for candidates their states did not elect. Three of these votes were invalidated due to preventative laws on the books in those electors’ home states, but the other seven were accepted as legitimate. Because of this, Hillary Clinton actually received five fewer votes than projected, while Donald Trump lost two. This was just an oddity in 2016, but in a situation where Biden wins the Rust Belt and nothing else, a single rogue elector could swing the entire election.

Most states have laws protecting against faithless electors, but one that doesn’t is Pennsylvania, a Rust Belt state Biden needs to win. In Pennsylvania, a dissatisfied Democratic elector could hypothetically switch their vote to Trump — or not vote for either candidate, essentially handing the election to Trump.

In the outcome that has Biden winning via the Rust Belt, he would win the election on paper 270-268. But just one defection by a Biden elector would mean the race would be a tie. Biden doesn’t just need to get more votes than Donald Trump; to win the Electoral College outright, he must get at least 270 votes. In other words, if Biden won the race with 269 votes and one elector defected, the race would be a draw.

In that event, the election would move to Congress for a vote based on state delegations, with each delegation receiving a single vote. Since Republicans control more state delegations than Democrats, Trump would almost certainly be elected, and Biden would lose, even though he received more Electoral College votes. (To make things even more complicated, the newly seated House members who won in November would be making this decision, and the Senate would select the vice president.)

Pennsylvania isn’t the only potential weak link in Biden’s electors, however. Any of 98 electors from the likely Democratic states of Minnesota, Illinois, New York, New Hampshire, Rhode Island or New Jersey could legally choose to become the most famous person in America and cause chaos in this scenario. Dangling that promise of recognition in front of 98 people is dangerous, and it’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility for one of them to seize the opportunity and hand the election to Trump. 

America runs on the will of the people, not the will of a single elector. No matter the outcome of this race, states that lack safeguards against faithless electors should act quickly to ensure that they don’t enable national chaos after the election. Not doing so risks having a second straight election clouded by claims of illegitimacy.

Sam Underhill is the founder and executive director of the ActivateGenZ Project, a Young Voices contributor and a student at the University of Alabama.