HONOLULU _ The last of the 50 states gave Bernie Sanders his first Electoral College vote that counted.
Hillary Clinton received three of the state's four electoral votes after winning 60 percent of the popular vote here last month. But one elector, David Mulinix, said he cast his vote for the Vermont senator because he was the "most qualified" candidate.
"They can call me faithless, but the point is if we don't think someone's qualified _ and Hillary Clinton I do not feel is qualified," he said.
Hawaii's electors are chosen by the major parties at their state conventions. Mulinix said he only joined the party this election cycle to support Sanders, who he said would have been elected president had he been the Democratic nominee. He had previously told The Associated Press he would cast his vote for Clinton, but said he changed his mind at the last minute.
"She did not lose the vote to Russian hackers, she lost the vote right there at the convention," he said, referring to the Democratic National Convention where he said Sanders' backers were treated unfairly.
"They robbed us, and the millennials know it."
Mulinix, who, like his fellow electors, wore a special lei made of green jade flowers, arrived for the vote with a list of candidates who had received votes in other Electoral College meetings across the country. He was aware that an elector in Maine had tried to vote for Sanders but that his vote had been invalidated. An election official said the vote for Sanders here would count.
The brief proceedings here in a nondescript conference room on the state capital's third floor began with another elector, John Bickel, asking whether there was any penalty for electors who cast their ballots for someone other than the winner of the statewide vote.
He said later that he had asked because he suspected someone might stray.
"The Electoral College is outdated. If any election has proved the Electoral College is outdated, it's this one," Bickel said.
Dolly Strazar, another elector and the vice chair of the state Democratic Party, said she had long supported the Electoral College because it ensured some degree of competition between large states and small ones such as Hawaii.
"It really seems in our times, it's thoroughly outdated," she said.
Janice Bond, the fourth elector, said she would have voted for Sanders but did not believe she was able to. She also expressed regret that President Barack Obama, who was born in Hawaii and is vacationing here with his family, did not attend the meeting.
"To have him be on our island and not show face was disappointing," she said.
