Electoral college formally elects Donald Trump as president

Electoral college formally elects Donald Trump as president The denouement of the 2016 election came on Monday, as electors in all 50 states and the District of Columbia formally elected Donald Trump as president of the United States. An effort by anti-Trump activists, who had urged electors to back efforts led by celebrities and academics to cast their ballots at variance with election results to

keep Trump from reaching the necessary 270 electoral votes, came to practically nothing. With counts still ongoing in California and Texas, the number of electoral college members who attempted to cast a protest vote was likely to reach at least nine. In some state capitals, proceedings were met with protests.   More than 200 demonstrators were on the steps of Pennsylvania’s capitol in Harrisburg on Monday morning, waving signs and chanting in chilly, 25F(-4C) weather. They chanted “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA!” and “No treason, no Trump!”

Several dozen protesters gathered outside South Carolina’s statehouse in Columbia, waving signs with messages imploring electors not to back the president-elect.

Vermont was the first state to report the results of its vote. As expected, all three electors voted for Clinton. Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, West Virginia and South Carolina followed for Trump, and Delaware for Clinton as the totals started to mount.

After a Hawaiian elector cast a vote for Bernie Sanders, the total was Trump with 304 votes and Clinton with 227. It takes 270 electoral college votes to win the presidency. Texas put Trump over the top, despite two Republican electors casting protest votes. “The letters are actually quite sad,” Lee Green, a Republican elector from North Carolina, told the Associated Press. “They are generally freaked out. They honestly believe the propaganda. They believe our nation is being taken over by a dark and malevolent force.”

The Guardian spoke to six so-called “faithless electors” who intended to change their vote, all but one of them Democrats. The sole Republican, Christopher Suprun of Texas, said: “Since I announced my intention to vote according to my conscience, I have received about half a dozen death threats against me and my family.

“More happily, a person I’ve known for years who traces his ancestry back to the American revolution told me he thinks his forebears would have been proud of what I’m doing, which made me feel pretty good.”

Wirt A Yerger Jr, a Republican elector in Mississippi, said: “I have gotten several thousand emails asking me not to vote for Trump. I threw them all away.”