The Electoral College may now have enough faithless electors to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president just days ahead of the body’s final vote, reports suggest.
After the results of last month’s election, there is still one more critical step before President-elect Donald Trump can become President Donald Trump, which is the December 19 vote of the 538 electors who would finalize the results. While most of these electors are bound to vote the results of the states they represent, so-called faithless electors are free to buck the results and vote their conscience.
And since Election Day, there has been a push for these electors to vote to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president. Citing Trump’s many business conflicts and his reluctance to take steps to divest his businesses along with his many foreign affairs blunders already, these groups are calling for electors to stop Trump either by shifting their votes to Hillary Clinton or choosing a “protest candidate” like Mitt Romney or John Kasich.
It appears these groups are now gaining traction. Harvard University law professor Larry Lessig claimed this week that there are up to 30 Republican electors open to the idea of voting against Donald Trump at the Electoral College vote on Monday.
“Surveying the three groups that are supporting Republican electors, we believe there are 20 right now — some tell me the number is higher than that, it should be more like 30 — but I feel confident in saying there’s at least 20,” Lessig told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd .
At least 37 electors must change their vote from Trump to prevent him from reaching the 270 needed to become president. Should no candidate reach 270, which appears to be the most likely scenario if the electors are planning to select a protest candidate, then it would be up to the U.S. House of Representatives to vote, and each state would get one vote. The U.S. Senate would vote separately on vice president.
There is still plenty of doubt about whether the Electoral College actually would follow through and deny Donald Trump the presidency. NPR noted that the scenario is still unlikely, calling it “far-fetched.”
But Richard Primus, a constitutional law professor at the University of Michigan, also told NPR that the original purpose of the Electoral College was to have a group that would vote their consciences.
“The Electoral College made sense to the founders because they were looking for an alternative to having Congress select the president, [and] the idea of a direct popular vote for the president didn’t make sense to them,” he said.
“So they came up with the idea of a special group that would be elected by the states, and in their vision of it the electors were absolutely going to vote their consciences,” he added.
There is still a chance for more electoral to change their vote. A growing portion of these electors has demanded a briefing on allegations that the Russian government interfered with the election for the purpose of having Donald Trump elected. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that it was Russia behind a hacking attack against Clinton’s campaign chief John Podesta and the Democratic National Committee.
As Politico reported this week, 54 of the 232 Democratic electors have now called on Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to offer a briefing on the allegations before Monday’s vote. This group is led by California’s Christine Pelosi, the daughter of house Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi.
While it remains a possibility that the Electoral College will stop Donald Trump from becoming president, the result of Monday’s vote won’t be known for a few more weeks. The Electoral College vote won’t be revealed until it is unsealed by Congress on January 6.
[Featured Image by Spencer Platt/Getty Images]
