Donald Trump’s incoming presidential administration is facing a growing, serious threat from members of the electoral college who are not interested in mindlessly backing for president a man so deep in the pocket of an adversarial foreign government, as he is with Russia.
Trump’s position of president-elect has come under intense scrutiny as it has come to light that members of the Russian government worked on behalf of his bid for the presidency via running an elaborate, potent smear campaign against Hillary Clinton.
This smear campaign took the form of hack based thefts of documents from key members of both the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign; these documents were then strategically released to the public via the long controversial organization Wikileaks.
Adding insult to injury for those dead set against accepting a Donald Trump presidency, Trump wasn’t only assisted in his bid for the presidency by a historically hostile foreign government, Trump did not even win the popular vote — and yet, he is set to become the next president of the United States, succeeding soon to be sorely missed President Obama, on January 20, 2017.
Thus, enter the electoral college. Normally, the occasion of the members of the electoral college casting their ballots for president is relatively mundane, with their votes simply confirming as president-elect the individual picked for the office by the nation’s voters around one month prior.
Such is not so this time, however. Trump managed to pull off becoming the president-elect while losing the popular vote via garnering a winning margin in the electoral college after winning the densely populated states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
States that are more densely populated have more members of the electoral college, and the assignment to a certain candidate of electors on a state by state basis overrules whatever the outcome of the national popular vote may be.
The electoral college has thus turned into the final battle ground for those trying to stop a Donald Trump presidency. After all, there is, in theory, little stopping members of the electoral college from breaking with their candidate assignment based off the popular vote totals in their home state alone.
Around 50 electors have now signed on to a letter demanding a classified intelligence briefing from outgoing Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on Trump’s connection to Russia, citing “the confirmed communication between Trump’s aides and those associated with the Russian election interference activity,” communications that “raise serious concerns that must be addressed before we cast our votes.”
This open letter, signed on to by almost 1 in 4 of the 232 Democratic members of the electoral college as of late Tuesday — along with one Republican, Chris Suprun of Texas — comes on the same day as Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig spoke to the media about another form of opposition brewing against Trump in the electoral college — members of the body that simply refuse to cast their vote for the controversial businessman turned political leader, instead opting for a more palatable conservative option.
It is not yet clear what that other conservative option may turn out to be for the electors, and it remains to be seen how the various electoral college centered efforts against Trump turn out.
Featured Image via Ethan Miller/ Getty Images.