News Dec 08, 2016 01:05 PM EST

Why Donald Trump is unlikely to be stopped from becoming president

By Shubham Ghosh

It's a month since Donald Trump has defeated Hillary Clinton to become the president-elect of the U.S. However, there is still some gap between the cup and lip as Trump has to be officially elected by the members of the Electoral College and that election is going to take place on December 19.

But within this time, there have already been calls from opponents to recount votes or appeal from disillusioned college members against backing Trump as the next president of the country. Such people even include Republicans like Christopher Suprun who recently penned an op-ed in New York Times explaining why he will not vote for Trump later this month. Five hundred and thirty-eight members of the Electoral College will vote and to officially enter the Oval Office, Trump will need support of the majority, which is 270.

Though Clinton won the popular vote, it was Trump who bagged more Electoral College votes that matter more to win the actual battle.

It has been reported that several electors are getting calls that are trying to convince them to ditch Trump. And among the Democrat electors, Colorado's Michael Baca and Washington State's Bret Chiafalo are hell-bent to follow Alexander Hamilton's advice that the Electoral College exists to stop an unqualified person from becoming the president of the U.S. to stop Trump from ascending the throne, according to Atlantic.

"This is an emergency," Atlantic report quoted Chiafalo as saying.

Such an eventuality of 'faithlessness' where the members of the Electoral College betrayed the popular vote when it came to them has never happened in the history of American presidential election. But Baca and Chiafalo feel this is an exceptional situation.

The anti-Trump electors are also ready to see a moderate Republican candidate in the place of the billionaire president-elect by uniting 135 electors from each party to back that another candidate. If that doesn't happen, the effort will be to influence 37 Republican electors to support the compromise candidate instead of Trump so that his tally comes down from the required figure of 270 (he has 306). The election would then be left for the House of Representatives.

But these possibilities look distant. First of all, if none of the candidates get the required 270 electoral votes and the election goes to the House of Representatives, the Republican majority in the House is unlikely to see much of a difference in the final result, an expert told Chicago Tribune.

Moreover, it is very unlikely that 37 Republican electors will start to think along the same lines and ditch Trump during voting.


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