Democrat would need to hope electoral college electors ignored voters’ wishes and picked her instead of Trump
FOR die-hard
Democrats holding out hope that they won’t have to live through a
Donald Trump presidency, there is a last, incredibly long shot for them
latch on to — a surprise twist in the Electoral College, the New York Post reports.
Though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 200,000, Trump
has won the minimum of 270 electoral votes necessary to be elected
president. As of late Wednesday, he had 290 to Clinton’s 228.
Hillary Clinton delivers her post-defeat speech to America after surprise loss to Trump
According to the Constitution, chosen
electors of the Electoral College are the real people who will vote for
president, when they meet on Dec. 19 in their respective state capitals.
However, there is technically nothing
stopping any of the electors from voting their conscience and refusing
to support the candidate to whom they were bound, or from abstaining
from voting altogether.
There’s even a name for it: becoming a “faithless elector.”
The idea of electors reversing their vote is rarely discussed
— and was most recently bandied about after the incredibly close 2000
election in which George Bush narrowly beat Al Gore. And electors going
“faithless” is exceedingly rare.
Well over 99 percent of electors
throughout American history have voted as pledged, according to an
analysis done by the New York Times.
It does happen, though.
The last faithless elector reared his
roguish head back in 2004, when a lone anonymous voter in Minnesota
declined to vote for Democrat John Kerry and instead voted for Kerry’s
running mate, John Edwards.
New US President Donald Trump addresses ecstatic supporters in NY
The rogue’s vote was purely ceremonial, as Bush already had 286 electoral votes, more than enough to ensure his reelection.
Faithless electors are technically
barred in only 29 states from ignoring the will of the voters, though
the penalties are light. And a faithless elector has never swung an
election.
But given the high dissatisfaction with Trump among Republicans, a few faithless GOP electors could well go rogue next month.
One Texas GOP elector, Chris Suprun of
Texas, a firefighter, told Politico in August that he finds Trump so
unpalatable he’d consider voting for Clinton when he gets to Georgia’s
capital on Dec. 19th.
Baoky Vu, a Decatur businessman, told
the Atlanta-based news site AJC.com in August that he couldn’t stomach
voting for Trump either, and was quietly convinced by local GOP leaders
to resign as an elector.
Clinton would need more than 20 GOP electors to go rogue and vote instead for her — a mighty tall order.
President Obama reflects on shock Donald Trump win
Even then, the new,
Republican-controlled Congress meets Jan. 6 to approve the electoral
college vote, and would certainly vote to void any roguery, handing the
victory firmly back to Trump.
The Founding Fathers created the electoral college because the were “afraid of direct Democracy,” according to FactCheck.org.
In fact, Alexander Hamilton thought the
electors would make sure “the office of President will never fall to
the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the
requisite qualifications.”
It remains to be seen, given Tuesday’s
surprise election result, whether Democrats — and even some Republicans —
who question the “requisite qualifications” of president-elect Donald
Trump will push to revisit the Electoral College system.
Trump met with President Barack Obama at the White House today as Melania Trumpwas showed around the living quarters by Michelle Obama.
Many Democrats are now speculating that the outgoing First Lady could launch her own bid for the presidency in 2020.
Hillary Clinton could still beat Donald Trump to the White
House in one possible scenario that could shake America
Source:abiyamo
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