New Delhi: What if the Electoral College in the United States fails to back Donald Trump, who has won electoral votes despite losing popular votes to Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton?
The conclusion of American intelligence agencies that Russia tried to influence US election result to harm Hillary Clinton’s campaign has only intensified the focus on Electoral College votes.
Fox News reported that John Podesta, chairman of Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential campaign, suggested Sunday that Russian President Vladimir Putin was indeed “personally involved” in the election email hacks because Russia wanted Donald Trump as its “lap dog” in the White House.
There have been alleged reports in the US media about common business interests between Donald Trumps and friends of Russian President Putin.
The Electoral College is expected Monday to select Donald Trump as the next president of the United States.
In the United States presidential election system the nationwide popular vote does not determine the outcome of the election. Rather, the President of the United States is determined by votes cast by electors of the Electoral College. The presidential elections of 1876, 1888, and 2000 produced an Electoral College winner who did not receive at least a plurality of the popular vote.
The Electoral College US consists of 538 electors. A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the President.
The electors meet in their respective states, where they cast their votes for President and Vice President on separate ballots .Each state’s electoral votes are counted in a joint session of Congress on the 6th of January in the year following the meeting of the electors.
Members of the House and Senate meet in the House chamber to conduct the official tally of electoral votes. The Vice President, as President of the Senate, presides over the count and announces the results of the vote. The President of the Senate then declares which persons, if any, have been elected President and Vice President of the United States.
In most presidential election years, the Electoral College vote would essentially be a formality after the popular vote in November, but 2016 was not a typical election year, considering Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton won the popular vote with roughly 2.6 million more ballots than Trump but lost the Electoral College vote.
Trump needs 270 electoral votes Monday. And the state victories put him in line to get 306 of the 538 — with each state getting one vote for each House and Senate member. The three remaining votes go to the District of Columbia.
Arizona electorate Donald Graham told Fox News on Saturday that the 11 electorates have received hundreds of thousands of emails telling them not to vote for Trump and that he’s received information that some of other 10 have been followed or have received a death threat.
Bureau Report
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