The recently concluded Electoral College voting has reaffirmed Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States. Of the 538 Electoral College members, 304 voted for Trump, and 224 voted for Hillary Clinton. On January 6, 2017, a final counting will be done in Congress and official results will be announced.
When votes have been cast today, of the 306 electors that pledged for Trump, 2 voted for someone else. And of the 232 electors that pledged to vote for Clinton, 4 voted for someone else.
Hallie Jackson, reporter for NBC, says that the only caveat for January 6 is when official results say otherwise and are overturned. Should this happen, the case will be brought to the House of Representatives, which is largely Republican. Jackson adds, "There is no chance that Donald Trump doesn't end up in the White House."
Leading to the Electoral College voting, anti-Trump protesters have made their last-ditch attempts to have members of the Electoral College change their minds. Of the 538 electoral members in 50 states, 37 electors would need to flip to stop Trump's presidential ascendancy temporarily.
On Donald Trump's Twitter account, he says, "If my many supporters acted and threatened people like those who lost the election are doing, they would be scorned and called terrible names!"
Many anti-Trump protesters are fueled by the US intelligence agency's report on Russia's interference on election results to persuade electors to rethink of their votes.
Clay Pell, a Rhode Island Elector and a Democrat supporter, says, "What I want is the information to be out there, so the American public and electors know who's been involved and make sure we protect the integrity of American democracy."
John Podesta, Clinton's former campaign chairman, pushes for the Russian intervention issue to be discussed with electors. Podesta's emails were hacked alongside Hillary Clinton's, and this proved to be a big blow to Clinton's integrity leading up to the elections. Podesta says, "The electors have a right to know what the answers are, (especially) if the US government has those answers before the election."
Kellyanne Conway, Trump's former campaign manager, says, "The entire nonsense about the electors trying to use the Russian hacking issue to change the results is really unfortunate. I think that actually undermines our democracy more than any other conversation we're having right now."
Trump is now at his Mar-a-Lago Palm Beach property for the holidays, but before settling he visited Alabama for his "Thank You" tour.
Four years ago, on this state, he said, "The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy." Now, he retracts back saying, "The electoral vote, and I never appreciated it until now... It's genius. I'm telling you. It's genius."
