Editing Faithless elector (section)

==History==
Over 59 elections, 165 electors have not cast their votes for [[President of the United States|president]] or [[Vice President of the United States|vice president]] as prescribed by the legislature of the state they represented.<ref name="FairVote"/> Of those:
* 71 electors changed their votes because the candidate to whom they were pledged died before the electoral ballot (in [[1872 United States presidential election|1872]] for president and [[1912 United States presidential election|1912]] for vice president).
* 1 elector chose to abstain from voting for any candidate (in [[2000 United States presidential election|2000]] for president and vice president).
* 93 were changed typically by the elector's personal preference, although there have been some instances where the change may have been caused by an honest mistake.

Usually, faithless electors act alone, although on occasion a faithless elector has attempted to induce other electors to change their votes in concert, usually with little if any success.

One exception was the [[1836 United States presidential election|1836 election]], in which all 23 Virginia electors acted together, altering the outcome of the electoral college vote but failing to change the outcome of the overall election. The Democratic ticket won states with 170 of the 294 electoral votes, but the 23 Virginia electors abstained in the vote for vice president, meaning the Democratic nominee, [[Richard Mentor Johnson|Richard M. Johnson]], received 147 votes or exactly half of the electoral college (one short of being elected). Johnson was subsequently elected vice president by the [[United States Senate|U.S. Senate]].