Thanks to the Electoral College, it seems like one. Nearly always, the electors vote for the candidate who won the most popular votes in their state. The cases — one from Colorado and one from Washington — raise an alarming prospect: Can presidential electors vote for whomever they please, disregarding what the voters of their state said? More than 160 “faithless electors” have chosen to go this route since the nation’s founding, a tiny fraction of all electoral votes in history. Some punish those who don’t, while others replace faithless electors with ones who will do the job they pledged to do.

Source: New York Times January 25, 2020 19:41 UTC