Election day is always the first Tuesday in November, but what many people don’t know is that is not the day the president is officially elected.
This past cycle Donald Trump and Mike Pence won the White House on December 19, when the Electoral College cast their ballots. Louisiana native, Scott Wilfong was one of the state’s electors for that vote.
“I always thought that would just be incredibly amazing to actually be one of the 538 people to cast a vote for president,” Wilfong said.
Wilfong also served as an elector in 2012 when Barack Obama won the election over Mitt Romney. While he still relished the experience, this time around he was glad he cast his vote for a winning candidate.
“It was very depressing,” Wilfong said. “Just not a real happy situation, even though you got to go have this honor.”
Wilfong has been on the GOP State Central committee for over 13 years and made it known that he was interested in representing his state as an elector.
In Louisiana the parties select their electors. Wilfong was one of two “at-large” electors chosen by party leaders. The other six are chosen by districts.
A Trump supporter from the beginning, Wilfong said there wasn’t too much disagreement between the electors on who they would cast their votes for.
“Some of the electors were backers of other candidates,” Wilfong said. “Some, you know, were not really favorable to Trump the whole way but they knew that this is what the state voted.”
In the weeks between November 8 and December 19, Wilfong received thousands of letters from across the state regarding his vote. Compared to 2012 when he received about 10 pieces of mail, this year was unlike any other for electors.
“You know they’ve never been lobbied like this, no one ever tried that,” Wilfong said. “To actually think to ask the electors to change their vote.”
The Electoral College was established at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and has been remodeled very little since. The framers were afraid that if the election was left up to the popular vote, states would vote for one of their own, and not really get to know the other candidates.
The fear of a popularity contest of some sort led to the compromise we still use today.
Donald Trump’s election was met with hard criticism because of Hillary Clinton’s popular vote victory. However, this was not the first time the victor didn’t win the popular vote. It has happened four previous times with John Quincy Adams in 1824, Rutherford Hayes in 1876, Benjamin Harrison in 1888 and George W. Bush in 2000.
Wilfong understands why opponents might at first disagree with the electoral college, but having seen it up close and personal, he understands why it is a cornerstone of our democracy.
“The electoral college doesn’t factor in popular vote, it does,” Wilfong said. “California gets 55 electoral votes because they have so many people, and Wyoming gets three. It was never intended for the people to elect the president. The states were to elect the president. We are not called the United people of America; we are called the United States of America.”