While today’s Electoral College vote is not expected, by most, to lead to any surprises, and Donald Trump will almost certainly be selected as the next president in a vote that is usually routine but takes place this year amid allegations of Russian hacking to try to influence the election, some states are not taking any chances and following last week’s report that Trump electors have seen a flurry of death threats, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that electors in Pennsylvania will have police protection as they cast their ballots on Monday.
One Pennsylvania elector, Ash Khare, told the Gazette that he receives thousands of emails a day trying to sway his vote.
“I’m a big boy,” said Khare, an India-born engineer and a longtime Republican from Warren County, who estimates he receives 3,000 to 5,000 emails, letters, and phone calls a day from as far away as France, Germany, and Australia. “But this is stupid. Nobody is standing up and telling these people, ‘Enough, knock it off.’ “
As a reminder, Pennsylvania allows its electors to vote for someone other than the candidate who won the state.
The messages have escalated to death threats, and so the 20 electors will have state troopers escorting them to cast their votes Monday.
As reported previously, GOP electors have been under pressure over the past month from anti-Trump groups to not vote for President-elect Donald Trump.
“I take my job as an elector very seriously, and in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump won,” said Mary Barket, a Northampton County resident and president of the Pennsylvania Federation of Republican Women. “So any argument thereafter, especially about the nature of him being a president, is not going to have an effect on me.” But she said she generally doesn’t open the messages.
“I don’t have the time, first of all,” she said. “Second of all, there’s really not much to be said that’s going to do anything to change my mind.”
Barket said she has been inundated with phone calls and emails and letters over the last month. Some tell her to read the Federalist Papers or express fear over Trump becoming the country’s commander-in-chief.
In interviews with the Gazette last week, a number of electors said there was no chance anyone will defect. “There is zero chance of that,” said elector Lawrence Tabas, a Philadelphia lawyer and general counsel for the state GOP. “If you want to place a bet on that in Vegas, you can make enough money to retire.”
Tabas said state officials this year gave out contact information for all 20 electors. In his case, that included his work and cell phones, his work email, and his home address. He can’t read every email or letter – and many of them have just been form letters with different signatories.
He said most of the conversations he’s had have been respectful. Others have veered off into what he would only call “nasty” territory. He would not give details. Khare said he received a letter from a 7-year-old describing his fear of Trump. Others have sent him photos of their families, saying they were worried about their future under a Trump presidency.
One woman called to tell him her husband had left the country. Another called him at 1 a.m., while he was in a deep sleep. He was also sent a copy of John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage, which focuses on the careers of eight senators whom Kennedy felt had shown courage under “enormous pressure” from their parties and constituents.
Khare said he understood that the country is deeply divided and that emotions are running high, but said he was clear on where he stands.
“I will not change my mind,” he said.
One GOP elector in Michigan has received death threats as well.
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Trump won 306 electoral votes on Election Day, crossing the 270 electoral vote threshold needed to clinch the presidency and surpassing Hillary Clinton’s 232 electoral votes. Monday’s results are expected to match those figures almost exactly. But thousands are expected to protest across the country as part of a long-shot effort to convince 37 GOP electors to cast their ballots for someone other than Trump.
While the frantic push to exert pressure on the Republican electors isn’t expected to change the outcome of Monday’s vote, it has put the Electoral College under a rare spotlight.
via http://ift.tt/2hiaPek Tyler Durden