State-Journal.com - Electors make McCain vote official

Photo By Hilly SchifferRobert E. Gable, state-at-large elector, left, casts his vote for the president and vice president of the United States as Mary Sue Helm, the election administrator for the Secretary of State, watches in the Supreme Court at the Capitol Monday.

On the morning of Nov. 4, only a few delusional dreamers thought Barack Obama " the first African American elected president " had a chance to carry Kentucky.

There was even less suspense Monday when Kentucky's eight presidential electors across the state gathered in the elegant Supreme Court courtroom to cast their ballots.

The fix was in.

It was a done deal as a smiling William Kirkland " better known as "Bill" on the streets of Frankfort and in his hometown of Gravel Switch " would say.

A local attorney and diehard Republican, Kirkland was in the audience because he's a member of the State Board of Elections.

"I also came because it's a constitutional part of our democracy in this country and it's a part that's not often seen by the public. I wanted to witness the ceremony."

Kirkland's longtime Frankfort friend, prominent statewide Republican Robert Gable, once a gubernatorial nominee, was chosen as one of the eight electors.

Then after Supreme Court Chief Justice John D. Minton Jr. administered the oath of office to the electors, Gable was unanimously elected as permanent chairman of them, all from the Republican Party.

John McCain and Sarah Palin, who won Kentucky's popular vote by nearly 300,000, received all eight votes for president and vice president Monday.

"This vote today represents another step in the presidential electoral process," said Secretary of State Trey Grayson. "The electors in Kentucky chose to follow the lead of Kentucky's citizens by backing the winners of the popular vote in Kentucky."

In an interview after the ceremony, Gable said, "I think it's extremely important that we have an Electoral College. I've heard some suggestions for change and I think the worst one would be to just do away with it and have a national vote, which would be administered by the media presumably."
That worries him.

"In Kentucky we have had, and hopefully it's in the past, a reputation in some counties for pretty big fraud," Gable said. "There are other states which have learned how to do that, too. I think the Electoral College to some degree is a buffer against massive fraud.

Gable was the only repeat elector Monday.

The Electoral College was established by the founding fathers as a compromise between election of the president by Congress and election by popular vote.

On the Monday following the second Wednesday of December, as established by federal law, each state's electors meet in their respective state capitals and cast their electoral votes, one for president and one for vice president.

The electoral votes are then sealed and transmitted from each state to the president of the U.S. Senate, who, on the following Jan. 8, opens and reads them before both houses of Congress.

If electors from every state cast their ballots in conjunction with the state's popular vote, Obama and Joseph Biden will be elected by a vote of 365-173.

Nebraska was expected to cast one electoral vote for Obama and Biden because that state allocates votes to winners of congressional districts and Obama and Biden won one congressional district to McCain and Palin's two.

Electors in 24 states are not bound to vote for the winner of the popular election, as is the case in Kentucky.

Kentucky has eight electoral votes, equal to the number of its U.S. senators and representatives.
The electors from the six congressional districts were chosen at Republican District conventions and the two at-large electors, Gable and Elizabeth Thomas of Flemingsburg, were elected at the state Republican Convention.

Gable said there was no doubt about Monday's outcome in Kentucky because the electors of the Republican Party "wouldn't switch their vote for anything."

Grayson said Monday was the first time since 1960, when John F. Kennedy was elected, that Kentucky's electoral votes went to a loser, Republican Richard Nixon, who later was elected president twice before resigning from office in his second term after the Watergate scandal.

Other electors from Kentucky Monday were Franklin's James Snider, 1st District; Walter Baker, 2nd District, Louisville's Edna Fulkerson, 3rd District; Louisville's Amy Towles, 4th District; Corbin's Nancy Mitchell, 5th District; and Lexington's Don Ball, 6th District.

Mitchell was elected permanent secretary of the electors Monday.

Others participating in Monday's ceremony were Hugh Derek Hall, who led the pledge of allegiance, Doug Lalli, minister of Westport Road Church of Christ in Louisville, and vocalist Kenny Bishop who sang "My Old Kentucky Home" and "God Bless America."

1.	Posted by Tabo December 16, 2008
	Now...let's see here...the election was Nov. 4 and Monday was Dec. 14. So, it only took six weeks for the Kentucky electoral college to cast their votes for the McCain-Palin ticket. Let's review what has happened in those six weeks, shall we? 1. McCain said he might not be able to support Palin for president. Hmmm...since the vice-president is only a heartbeat away from the presidency and he picked her as his vice-presidential candidate would he have thought the same thing had he been elected? This seems a little strange to me. 2. The stock market and economy is failing yet the Republicans decided not to disperse half of the money they voted on to help the economy. Instead they are going to wait and let Obama do that. Are they no longer capable of dispursing money after eight years of doing just that? Does this seem strange to anyone other than me? 3. Obama has selected most of his cabinet and staff and CNN said that 80% of Americans think he did an excellent job. We keep getting reports from his team about what they plan to do to help our economy and nation. Yet, in the past six weeks the Republicans have done little. We have hardly heard from President Bush at all about anything. I understand about being a lame-duck president, but when there is a national and international economic crisis shouldn't the president in power do something? Doesn't it seem a lttie strange that he hasn't? I am not picking one political party over another. It simply seems to me that the Republicans have stopped functioning since the election and they are still in power. This brings up the point of timely voting. Why does it take six weeks for Kentucky's electoral college to cast their votes? I wonder if the election results would be the same if it happened today. Maybe...maybe not. But, a lot has happened in six weeks. And, I believe the electoral college should vote immediately after the election or be replaced by the public vote. And...that is this woman's opinion.