electoral college

The Electoral College voted today, and, although the votes won't be counted officially for a couple weeks yet, and we may not know about individual faithless electors until then, it appeared to go without any major hitch. This was of interest this year, since a few Republicans somehow got it into their heads that, if the Republican electors withheld their votes, they could prevent a quorum and throw the election into the House. Unfortunately for them, they misread the Constitution. The supermajority quorum is for a House contingent election; as for the Electoral College, so long as over half the electors vote for one candidate, it doesn't matter what the rest of them do. And Obama has the votes.

Retro stuff was going on, though, in Romney's stronghold of Mississippi:

The state's Republican governor, Phil Bryant, joked that Billy Mounger, an 86-year-old elector, probably wished to vote for Calvin Coolidge, a renowned small-government conservative president in the 1920s.

"I'd like to have Coolidge back," said Mounger, a Jackson businessman.