Don’t look to the Electoral College to upend Trump victory
WASHINGTON — There’s more hustle than hope behind an effort to derail Donald Trump’s presidency in the Electoral College.
Republican electors are being swamped with pleas to buck tradition and cast ballots for someone else at meetings across the country Monday that are on course to ratify Trump as the winner. AP interviews with more than 330 electors from both parties found little appetite for a revolt.
Whether they like Trump or not, and some plainly don’t, scores of the Republicans chosen to cast votes in the state-capital meetings told AP they feel bound by history, duty, party loyalty or the law to rubber-stamp their state’s results and make him president. Appeals numbering in the tens of thousands — drowning inboxes, ringing cellphones, stuffing home and office mailboxes with actual handwritten letters — have not swayed them.
The interviews found widespread Democratic aggravation with the electoral process but little expectation that the rush of anti-Trump manoeuvring can stop him. For that to happen, Republican-appointed electors would have to stage an unprecedented defection.