WASHINGTON —
The next chapter in the tumultuous U.S. presidential election plays out Monday, with voting in the Electoral College expected to officially confirm that billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump will become the country’s 45th president.
Americans have known since early November that Trump would take over the White House when he is inaugurated January 20. U.S. presidential elections, however, are not determined by the national popular vote, but rather by the individual outcomes in presidential balloting in all 50 states and the national capital city, Washington.
The popular vote winner in each state normally receives all of that state’s Electoral College votes, which are allotted in proportion to the state’s population. A total of 538 electors will cast those ballots Monday in their respective state capitals.
The Democratic candidate, former U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton, defeated Trump by nearly 2.9 million votes in the national popular vote. But the Republican Trump won where it mattered, in enough of the state-by-state contests to claim an apparent 306-232 edge in the Electoral College, well more than the 270 majority he needs.
Clinton piled up big vote margins in California and New York to give her a national popular vote edge, while Trump won enough states, sometimes relatively narrowly, to claim the Electoral College advantage and a four-year term as the nation’s leader. It would be the fifth time in U.S. history, and the second in the last 16 years, that the popular vote winner did not win the all-important Electoral College vote.
FILE – Members of New York’s Electoral College meet in the New York state Senate Chamber to confirm the election of President Barack Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden, in Albany, New York, December 17, 2012.
Usually a formality but not this year
In most election years, voting in the Electoral College is little more than a formality. But that is not the case this year.
Because of the close and bitterly contested race, and continuing opposition to Trump’s victory by many Clinton supporters, thousands of Americans have bombarded the 306 Republican electors with emails and phone calls, demanding they reject Trump, either by voting for Clinton or another, more acceptable Republican. In the unlikely event that 37 Republican electors defect from Trump and the vote ends in a tie at 269, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives would pick the president.
Most of the electors, however, are bound by state law to vote for the candidate who won their state vote count, or if they are not, say they feel morally compelled to vote in the Electoral College the way their state voted.
FILE – Clerks unseal the certificates of results from all fifty states during a meeting of the U.S. Electoral College in the House of Representatives on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 4, 2013. Never since its creation in 1787 has the Electoral College not endorsed the candidate who won most of its 538 votes.
Faithless electors
Faithless electors – those who cast Electoral College votes for someone other than the presidential candidate who won their state – are not unheard of in American political annals, but they are rare, with just a handful since the Electoral College was first used in 1789.
Several U.S. news media outlets who have interviewed at least some of the 2016 electors say the vast majority are planning to back the winner in their state, with only one known Republican elector, Chris Suprun in the southwestern state of Texas, saying he would not vote for Trump.
Some analysts have predicted there might be more defectors, but until the electors cast their Electoral College ballots, no one knows for sure.
The country’s Founding Fathers debated how to pick the country’s presidents, deciding against using the popular vote for fear that mob rule might ensue or that the biggest states would have too much control of the ultimate outcome. It settled on the Electoral College, in part to give even the smallest states at least three electoral votes.
As it currently stands, seven states and the U.S. capital, Washington, D.C., each have three electoral votes. The Pacific coast state of California has the most, at 55.
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