The electoral voters speak and they're not out for a revolt [View all]
Source: Associated Press
By CALVIN WOODWARD and RACHEL LA CORTE
Dec. 15, 2016 3:53 AM EST
WASHINGTON (AP) — Although pestered to a fare-thee-well to abandon Donald Trump, Republican electors appear to be in no mood for an insurrection in the presidential campaign's last voting ritual. This most untraditional of elections is on course to produce a traditional outcome Monday — an Electoral College ticket to the White House for the president-elect.
Whether they like Trump or not, and some surely 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 cell phones, stuffing home and office mailboxes with actual handwritten letters — have not swayed them.
The Associated Press tried to reach all 538 electors Wednesday evening and interviewed more than 330 of them, finding widespread Democratic aggravation with the electoral process but little expectation that the hustle of anti-Trump maneuvering can derail him. For that to happen, Republican-appointed electors would have to stage an unprecedented defection and Democrats would need to buck tradition, too, by peeling away from Hillary Clinton and swinging behind a consensus candidate in sufficient numbers.
Still, people going to the typically ho-hum electoral gatherings have been drawn into the rough and tumble of campaign-season politics. Republicans are being beseeched to revolt in a torrent of lobbying, centered on the argument that Clinton won the popular vote and Trump is unsuited to the presidency. Most of it is falling on deaf ears, but it has also led to some acquaintances being made across the great political divide.
Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ec578b86110043f59def592d1f178be1/electoral-voters-speak-and-theyre-not-out-revolt
I suspected as much, but to have it laid out like this is a real gutpunch.
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