ELECTORAL COLLEGE VOTERS FACE HARASSMENT
In Michigan, Democratic electors have been promised police escorts from their cars into the state Capitol, where today they will formally vote for Joe Biden.
In Arizona, state officials are holding the vote at an undisclosed location for safety reasons, far from what is expected to be a heated hearing on election integrity issues that Republicans will conduct in the Statehouse.
Even in Delaware, the home state of the president-elect, officials relocated their ceremony to a college gymnasium, a site considered to have better security and public health controls.
For decades, Electoral College voters have served as the rubber-stamp
ing bureaucrats of American democracy, operating well below the political radar as they provided pro forma certification of a new president. Despite its procedural nature, the role has long been considered an honor, bestowed as a way to recognize political stature or civic service.
This year, the Electoral College is another piece of routine election mechanics thrown into question over President Donald Trump’s claims of fraud. After five weeks of lawsuits, recounts and Republican inquiries into unfounded claims of fraud, Americans will turn to the 538 members of the Electoral College to provide a measure of finality to Biden’s victory.
And as small-town electors face harassment and more prominent figures adapt to increased security measures, a duty long considered a privilege has also become a headache. Even as the electors prepared to vote today, Trump on Sunday railed on Twitter against the “MOST CORRUPT ELECTION IN U.S. HISTORY” and suggested that swing states could not certify “without committing a severely punishable crime” — further raising concerns about electors’ personal security.
“Trump supporters did not get the same kind of vitriol in 2016,” said Khary Penebaker, a Democratic elector from Wisconsin who will be casting his vote for Biden at the state Capitol in Madison. “This is some scary stuff, man, and this is not what America is supposed to be like.”
Aside from safety and pandemic concerns, which led to the closings of the Michigan and Wisconsin state Capitols to the public, the process has become an unlikely news media event. From protests outside the voting sites to livestreamed broadcasts of the activities inside the rooms, electors, state officials and party leaders are bracing for an extraordinary onslaught of attention.
The new attention on electors comes as the Electoral College system has tenuous support from the American public, particularly Democrats who say it doesn’t represent the will of the people, after the last two Republican presidents, George W. Bush and Trump, took the White House while losing the popular vote.
Today’s certifications will be conducted against a backdrop of tense partisan acrimony. The Supreme Court on Friday rejected an 11th-hour effort by Trump allies to change the outcome of the election, the latest in a string of legal defeats. A broader effort to persuade Republican-controlled state legislatures to swap out Democratic electors for a slate loyal to Trump has also failed.
Despite the legal losses, much of the party has rallied behind the president’s push to overturn the will of millions of voters, giving rise to a wave of outrage and threats from his supporters.
The 16 electors who will cast their votes for Biden in Michigan are expected to have to traverse a gantlet of protesters, some armed, from a group that believes the election was stolen from Trump.
In Wisconsin, electors were given new security protocols on Friday, complete with instructions to enter the Capitol grounds through an unmarked side door away from expected protesters.