Electors are set to gather in every state today to formally elect Donald Trump president even as anti-Trump forces try one last time to deny him the White House.
Protests are planned for state capitals, but they are unlikely to persuade the Electoral College to dump Trump, The Associated Press reports. An survey of electors by The AP found very little appetite to vote for alternative candidates.
Republican electors say they have been deluged with emails, phone calls and letters urging them not to support Trump. Many of the emails are part of coordinated campaigns.
In addition to thousands of emails, Louisiana Republican elector Charlie Buckels says he received a FedEx package with a 50-page document that the sender said “had absolute proof that the Russians hacked the elections.”
“From the tenor of these emails, you would think these people are curled up in a corner in a fetal position with a thumb in their mouth,” Buckels says.
Louisiana’s eight Republican electors will gather at 11:30 a.m. in the State Capitol’s Senate Chamber. Secretary of State Tom Schedler will administer the oaths of office prior to their official votes for president and vice president.
A joint session of Congress is scheduled for Jan. 6 to certify the results of the U.S. Electoral College vote, with Vice President Joe Biden presiding as president of the Senate. Once the result is certified, the winner—likely Trump—will be sworn in on Jan. 20.
The Electoral College has 538 members, with the number allocated to each state based on how many representatives it has in the House plus one for each senator. The District of Columbia gets three, despite the fact that the home to Congress has no vote in Congress.
To be elected president, the winner must get at least half plus one—or 270 electoral votes. Most states give all their electoral votes to whichever candidate wins that state’s popular vote. Maine and Nebraska award them by congressional district. Electors are selected by state parties.
The AP tried to reach all of the electors and interviewed more than 330 of them, finding widespread aggravation among Democrats with the electoral process, but little expectation Trump would be derailed.
