New York Post

Members threatened if they vote for Don

- By MARK MOORE mmoore@nypost.com

Electors around the country are being harassed with a barrage of e-mails, phone calls, letters — and even death threats — in an effort to block Donald Trump from being voted in as president by the Electoral College on Monday.

The bullying is overwhelmi­ng Sharon Geise’s tech devices, but not her resolve to support Trump.

The Mesa, Ariz., grandmothe­r woke up Wednesday to more than 1,500 e-mails demanding she not carry out her legal duty to vote for the president-elect.

“They just keep coming and coming,” Geise (inset) told The Post, estimating that she has received more than 50,000 e-mails since the election. “They’re overpoweri­ng my iPad.” Her solution: mass delete. Despite the avalanche, she said her resolve to back Trump is stronger than ever.

“Obviously, their minds are made up and they’re not going to change. I’m not either,” the soft-spoken Geise said.

Reports of GOP electors being badgered have been reported in numerous states, including Georgia, Idaho, Tennessee, Arizona, Utah and Michigan

Like Geise, Republican Patricia Allen of Tennessee told The Post she has been bombarded with 2,000 e-mails, 120 letters and five phone calls, all urging her to switch and vote against Trump.

But Allen, 74, said despite the “siege,” she’s not budging.

“This has never happened before . . . Do you know how long it takes to delete all those e-mails every day?” she asked.

She has also been solicited by a Harvard University group backed by constituti­onal-law professor Lawrence Lessig, who has offered free legal aid to electors who change their votes.

“That borders on bribery,” said Allen. “Carried to this extreme, the day might come when an elector could be sold to the highest bidder.”

Lessig claims that 20 GOP electors are considerin­g voting against Trump.

Even if that’s true, it wouldn’t be enough to alter the outcome when the 538 members of the Electoral College gather to cast their official votes. Trump has 306 electoral votes, 36 more than the minimum required.

For Michael Banerian, a senior at Oakland University in Michigan and a Republican elector, the harassment comes with a dark side.

He said he has been getting death threats via e-mail, snail mail, Twitter and Facebook.

“Somebody threatened to put a bullet in the back of my mouth,” Banerian, 22, told The Post Wednesday.

In Utah, a group called the Democracy and Progress PAC placed full-page ads in Salt Lake City’s daily newspapers telling electors they are “not bound” to vote for Trump, who won the state.

But the Deseret News reported that under Utah law, because Trump won the state, he must receive all its electoral votes.

The paper said Utah’s six Republican electors are being inundated with e-mails pressing them not to support Trump.

One of them, Salt Lake County Councilman Richard Snelgrove, said there’s no way he’ll cave to the pressure.

“No, Trump won the Electoral College fair and square,” he said.

The effort to deny the electoral vote to Trump was launched shortly after the Nov. 8 election.

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