Trump’s Final Lap to the White House
■ The 538 members of the Electoral College are convening on Monday in every state and the District of Columbia to determine who will be the next president and vice president. New York Times reporters across the country are monitoring the outcome of the votes.
■ President-elect Donald J. Trump’s loss in the popular vote has called into question the labyrinthine Electoral College process. Demonstrations and rallies are planned in several state capitals.
■ Ten electors — including Christopher Suprun, a Texas Republican who has turned on Mr. Trump, and Christine Pelosi, the daughter of Representative Nancy Pelosi of California — have demanded an intelligence briefing on Russian efforts to elect Mr. Trump.
Where to Watch
Most meetings of electors are being held in state capitals, usually in legislative chambers where public seating is limited. A number of states are live-streaming voting, including (but not limited to) California, Florida, Louisiana, Illinois, Washington, Virginia, Maryland, Indiana and Tennessee. The offices and websites of individual secretaries of state can offer more information on whether and where meetings will be broadcast.
There is also a list of times for meetings of state electors.
How Did We Get Here?
The electoral process was created as a middle path between election of the president by popular vote and election by Congress.
“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.” — Article II, United States Constitution
The 12th Amendment sets out some specific rules.
A constitutional amendment would be required to change the process. Efforts to create a direct election have been unsuccessful.
On the Calendar
Many of us know that Election Day is the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November because in rural, colonial America, November was after the fall harvest, and Tuesday gave citizens and their horses enough time to get to the polls without breaking the Sabbath. But why does the Electoral College meet on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December — this year, Dec. 19?
The answer isn’t simple, but it is surprising: In 1792, the meeting of the Electoral College was set for the first Wednesday in December, and the vote to select electors — what we now regard as the vote for president — was to occur no more than 34 days before that meeting. In 1845, Congress intended to make Election Day the first Tuesday in November, but realized that would not always meet the 34-day mandate prescribed by the Electoral College rules. So it chose the first Tuesday after the first Monday instead.
So the meeting of the Electoral College actually determined the date of Election Day.
Election Day has become a tradition, but the Electoral College meeting has jumped around since then. In 1887, Congress junked the 34-day rule and moved the meeting to the second Monday in January. At that time, the presidential inauguration was on March 4. But in 1934, the 20th Amendment shifted Inauguration Day to Jan. 20, and so Congress moved the Electoral College meeting back to December — its present timing — to ensure that there was enough time to settle disputes over electoral votes before the new president was sworn in.
You might say the date of the Electoral College meeting mirrors the evolution of the United States: from a horse-and-buggy society where distance dictated events, to a technocratic one where having time to hash out legal disputes was paramount. — MICHAEL WINES
The Chance to Go Rogue
Nine times in the past century, presidential electors have done what party rules and, often, state laws forbid: They have broken ranks, casting their votes for someone other than the candidate who won in their states.
It’s not inconceivable that on Monday, as many or more electors could go rogue in a single day.
Since the election on Nov. 8, eight electors — four from Colorado, three from Washington and one from Texas — have said they will cast ballots for someone other than Mr. Trump or Hillary Clinton. The aim is to jump-start a campaign to deny Mr. Trump the 270 votes he needs to become president.
Mr. Trump won 306 electoral votes, so to push his total below 270, at least 37 Republican electors from states he won would have to jump ship. So far, only one of the eight rogue electors fits that description. The rest are Democrats from states won by Mrs. Clinton who hope that by shifting their votes from her to another candidate — a moderate Republican alternative to Mr. Trump is most often mentioned — they can create an example for any wavering Republican electors.
Were Mr. Trump’s electoral vote harvest to fall below 270, the election would be thrown to the House of Representatives, which would choose from among the top three vote-getters in the Electoral College.
Does the effort stand a chance? R. J. Lyman, a Boston lawyer, said he had counseled “a couple dozen” electors who had expressed uncertainty about how they should vote. Mr. Lyman, who led a “super PAC” backing the vice-presidential bid of William F. Weld, the Libertarian candidate and former Massachusetts governor, describes himself as a classic political centrist who is not pushing electors to support or dump Mr. Trump, but simply helping them consider their constitutional responsibilities.
“I want to make sure they neither reflect a rubber stamp nor go with immense political pressure from others to go off the rails,” he said in an interview.
Nothing in the Constitution requires electors to vote for the candidate who wins their state; in 1836, in fact, a revolt by electors threw the choice for vice president to the Senate. But in the past century, it has become custom — and in many states, the law — that they do so.
What are the chances that the electors will put Mr. Trump’s victory in jeopardy? “Slim and none,” said Robert M. Alexander, a political science professor at Northern Ohio University and the author of “Presidential Electors and the Electoral College: An Examination of Lobbying, Wavering Electors and Campaigns for Faithless Votes.”
Monday’s vote will tell. — MICHAEL WINES
Menacing Messages in Arizona
Arizona’s 11 electors have received hundreds of letters, tens of thousands of emails and enough threats to force state officials to tighten security on Monday at the State Capitol in Phoenix, where they will meet.
The threats have come disguised as Christmas cards, in Facebook posts and in private messages like those received dozens of times by the state’s Republican Party chairman, Robert S. Graham, telling him he was being followed and had better watch his back.
“It’s one thing to put pressure on people. It’s another thing to really disrupt their lives, to threaten them,” Mr. Graham said. “This has gone well beyond anything that you’d qualify as activism.”
The other day, one of the electors threw away 35 pounds’ worth of correspondence demanding that she vote for Mrs. Clinton or anyone but Mr. Trump. Another, Jane Lynch, a longtime Republican activist and former state party official, got 1,000 emails in one hour, Mr. Graham said.
There are some writers who believe that Mr. Trump works for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and that his election is part of a big Russian conspiracy to take over the United States, Mr. Graham said. A lot of the emails carry variations of a message received more than once by Bruce Ash, an elector from Tucson: “Put country above party and block Donald Trump from the presidency.”
Electors have nonetheless pledged that they will support Mr. Trump on Monday. — FERNANDA SANTOS
Who Counts the Votes?
At 1 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 6, members of the House and Senate will meet in the House chamber to count the electors’ votes. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., as the departing president of the Senate, is expected to preside over the count, during which every state’s vote is opened and announced in alphabetical order. Mr. Biden will then declare the winner based on who has a majority of votes: at least 270.
Lawmakers can then challenge either individual electoral votes or state results as a whole. If an elector has chosen to vote against state results, this is the moment when lawmakers can petition to throw that vote out. Objections must be in writing and signed by at least one member of the House and one member of the Senate.
If there are any objections, the House and Senate will immediately split up to consider them and will have two hours to decide whether they support the objection or not. Both chambers will then reconvene and share their decisions; if both the House and Senate agree with the objection, they will throw out the votes in question. But Congress has never sustained an objection to an electoral vote.
After any objections have been resolved, the results are considered final. The next step is to swear in the winner on Jan. 20. — EMMARIE HUETTEMAN
P.C: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/us/politics/electoral-college-vote.html
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