HOW OREGON SENDS ELECTORS TO THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

As ballots were filled out in homes throughout the state of Oregon in recent weeks, a critical detail was missing that likely came across as misleading – in easily the most anticipated contest.

The Oregon ballots listed presidential and vice-presidential party candidates from the Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Greens, and Progressives. But in a technical sense, none of them were chosen by your vote. In fact, there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that says the U.S. president must be elected by the general population.

How can this be true, if there are public presidential debates, town halls, and entire campaigns run to encourage people to vote? State laws are largely the reason behind this.

Article II, Section I of the Constitution lays out how the president is to be chosen: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.” In short, the Constitution lays out that the president is elected through a special commission formed every four years, known as the Electoral College, in which states appoint delegates to decide who will be the next president. Although the Constitution allows states to appoint their delegates to their liking, all but two states (Maine and Nebraska) and Washington, D.C., have adopted similar rules on how delegates are appointed to the Electoral College.

Oregon, like most states, appoints its seven electors based on a slate of seven candidates pledged to each presidential and vice-presidential ticket. A statewide election (i.e., the November public vote) is held to determine which slate of electors will represent Oregon in the Electoral College: that slate of electors whose candidate received the largest share of votes.
The Governor, six days prior to the convening of the Electoral College, notifies the federal government which electors will participate in the formal Electoral College vote, due on Dec. 14 this year. This is done through a Certificate of Ascertainment, sent to federal officials by Dec. 23, for a final confirmation of the winner.

Some states will put these slates of electoral candidates underneath the presidential candidates to which they pledged support on ballots. But in Oregon, they are not displayed, and so the mystery of the electors actually being selected continues.

There’s a big, proposed change on the horizon, however.

In 2019, Oregon entered the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. It is a pact among states that agree to award their electors to whomever wins the popular vote nationwide, as opposed to the victorious president-vice-president ticket in that state, itself. Though this agreement was ratified in Oregon in 2019, it will not become effective until enough states have joined the pact whose combined electors add up to at least 270 (the number required to win the White House). Currently, states totaling 196 electors are prepared to operate under the Compact, 74 shy of the needed amount.

As the law continues for now, in Oregon electors are nominated by all the parties that are running presidential candidates. Rules for how parties nominate electors varies depend on their own bylaws. Oregon Democrats typically nominate local party leaders, as well as the various chairs of the local conventions. Their bylaws now state that at least one of the chairs of the conventions which are to be selected as an elector must be a woman.
Oregon Republicans, likewise, nominate their electors at various district conventions. Since third, or smaller, parties generally are highly unlikely to win the presidency, those other than the Democratic and Republican parties do not have a formalized process of nominating electors.

As in some states, Oregon requires elector-candidates to sign a pledge that they will remain faithful to their candidate and not to vote for whomever they please, when the time comes. However, no penalty is specified under state law. The constitutionality of this law has been disputed for some time until this year, when the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled Chiafalo v. Washington that penalizing faithless electors (by fines or other means) is Constitutional.