Electors Meet and Make It Real--Bush-Quayle Ticket Is the Winner

Six weeks after the popular presidential election, 538 Americans on Monday carried out the constitutional duty of the Electoral College by casting the votes that actually will make George Bush and Dan Quayle the next President and vice president.

Bush and Quayle, who carried 40 states in the Nov. 8 balloting, received far more than the 270 electoral votes required to be elected. After Hawaii’s electors cast the last four votes--for Democratic candidates Michael S. Dukakis and Lloyd Bentsen--the final tally showed Bush and Quayle had received all 426 electoral votes they earned on Election Day.

Electors are not bound to vote as pledged in popular returns, and one Democrat from West Virginia provided the day’s only surprise by casting her presidential vote for Democratic vice presidential nominee Bentsen and her vice presidential vote for Dukakis, the presidential nominee.

West Virginia Secretary of State Ken Hechler said the elector, Margarette Leach of Huntington, made the switch to express her opposition to continued use of the Electoral College system.

Her protest meant that Dukakis got one electoral vote fewer than the 112 he earned by carrying 10 states and the District of Columbia on Nov. 8.

By federal law, electors meet in each state and vote on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December following a presidential election. The balloting this week set the stage for another suspenseless ceremony on Jan. 4, when Congress will convene in joint session so that the vice president, Bush, can open the sealed electors’ ballots and announce the result--that he will be the next President.

Although the Constitution does not require electors to follow their states’ popular votes, there have been few deviations in history. Before Leach shifted her votes in protest, there had been only eight “faithless electors” in more than 200 years.

Before the balloting, Democrats from New York and Minnesota and a Republican from Texas had suggested they might cast symbolic votes for other candidates, but none did so.

Reluctance on Quayle

“I have reservations about Mr. Quayle,” Texas elector William F. Spivey Jr. said, “but our President (Bush), who I do not have reservations about, has seen fit to choose him, so I’m going to go with what he says. . . . I should have abstained, probably.”

Some states treated the brief ceremony as a historic occasion, while others made a party of it. In some states, the formalities of voting and signing papers were over within 10 minutes.