Take The Poll: Should The Electoral College Dump Donald Trump And Pick A Different President?

Should the Electoral College dump Donald Trump and pick someone else to be president? You can now take the poll and make your voice heard on whether the nation’s electors should take their last chance to stop Trump from taking over as the leader of the free world.

Trump won the 2016 presidential election by a narrow margin in the Electoral College, turning Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania to upset Hillary Clinton. But despite Trump turning out the vote in exactly the states where he needed it, Clinton won the popular vote by a margin of 2.5 million votes and counting.

This disparity between the Electoral College and the popular vote, combined with a series of troubling conflicts of interest for Donald Trump, has many calling on electors to go against Trump and pick someone else instead. You can share your feelings in the poll below.

https://www.playbuzz.com/inquisitr/take-the-poll-should-the-electoral-college-dump-donald-trump

The 538 members of the Electoral College will meet on December 19 to formally vote on who will become the nation’s next president. The electors are pledged to pick the candidate who won their state, but there are already some indicating they will buck tradition and vote their conscience. As the New Yorker noted, there have been a handful of electors who have spoken out against Donald Trump.

“Art Sisneros, a Republican elector from Texas, resigned his appointment rather than vote for Donald Trump. Two Democratic electors, Bret Chiafolo, of Washington, and Michael Baca, of Colorado, have launched a campaign to convince electors of both parties to abandon their pledges and instead vote for a moderate Republican—they have suggested Mitt Romney, John Kasich, or Colin Powell.”

Baca and Chiafolo said they have five electors on board, but all are also Democrats. So while they may make a statement when the Electoral College votes, they will still have no chance of stopping Donald Trump unless some Republicans decide to follow suit.

Under this plan, only 38 Trump electors would need to change their vote in order to bring Trump below the 270 electoral votes needed to become president. In that case, the House of Representatives would vote on the next president and could pick a different Republican.

There are a handful of arguments made by those encouraging the Electoral College to stop Donald Trump from being president. Some have cited the discrepancy between the final Electoral College total and the popular vote, where Clinton leads Trump by 2.5 million votes and growing.

And as the Washington Post pointed out, the winning margin for Donald Trump ended up being much smaller — just under 80,000 votes made Donald Trump the president instead of Hillary Clinton.

“More people were in attendance as the Ohio State Buckeyes beat a high school football team in Columbus last weekend. More people live in Gary, Ind., than made the difference in this presidential race. In fact, Clinton’s margins in 51 counties were larger than the deficit in these three critical states. That’s margins, not the number of votes she actually won.”

Others have cited Trump’s conflicts of interest. In the weeks since the 2016 presidential election, Trump has been unwilling to separate his business empire from his new role as the highest-ranking member of the federal government.

The Atlantic compiled an extensive list of all the business holdings that could present a conflict, including money the Secret Service would pay directly to Trump’s company to rent space in New York’s Trump Tower while protecting the president in his Manhattan home.

The latest reported conflict of interest also came in what could be Donald Trump’s biggest foreign affairs blunder. On Friday, he took a call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, the first president since 1979 to acknowledge the government of the island nation. The move went against the United States policy of recognizing “one China” with the government in Beijing. As The Atlantic noted, the call could have something to do with Trump’s plans to build a luxury hotel in Taiwan.

#Trump under fire for call to #Taiwan *even more so* following revelations from this and similar reports #DemBootCamp #AMJoy pic.twitter.com/Xl2y4gb8iT

— Formerly 'AM JOY' on @MSNBC (@amjoyshow) December 3, 2016

But there are also plenty making the argument that the Electoral College should follow the results of the states and vote for Donald Trump. For one, it could create nationwide upheaval among those who supported Trump, and it would place either an unpopular Hillary Clinton or a Republican who was not on the final ballot as the nation’s president.

You can make your voice heard by taking the poll above and deciding whether the Electoral College should dump Donald Trump.

[Featured Image by Drew Angerer/Getty Images]