Art Sisneros apparently is a man of deep faith and conviction.
He takes an oath and plans to stick by it. So, when he took an oath as a Texas Republican elector to vote for the individual who won the state’s electoral votes in the presidential election, he felt he had to abide by that oath.
Except for one thing: The person who won the state’s 38 electoral votes is Donald J. Trump, a man who — according to Sisneros — doesn’t deserve his vote.
What to do?
Sisneros did the only thing he felt he could do: He resigned as a Texas elector. He walked away from his task of casting a vote for president because he couldn’t (a) vote for TrumpĀ or (b) become something called a “faithless elector,” meaning he would break his pledge to support the GOP candidate for president.
Sisneros calls the Electoral College “corrupted from its original intent.”Ā I won’t weigh in on whether we should toss the Electoral College out. My sense is that it still performs a public service to the national electorate by giving smaller states more of a voice in the electoral process … which I consider to be a good thing.
But I do like the notion that one elector has weighed carefully the consequences of his actions and decided his best option is to walk out, to follow his conscience out the door and to allow the state to appoint someone to his spot who isn’t as conflicted as he is.
As U.S. News and World Report noted: “(Sisneros’)Ā decision followed a previous post in which he posed the question of whether it was ‘acceptable for a Christian to vote for a man like Trump for president,’ and concluded that he could not ‘in good conscience’ do so.
This is precisely the kind of contradiction that many of us saw, with committed evangelical voters sticking with Trump, even in light of the candidate’s admission that he groped women and behaved like a complete and utter boor.
I cannot help but wonder if there will be more of this kind of soul-searching among electors as the date approaches for them to cast their important votes for president.