Electors’ lawyer: Founding Fathers ‘anticipated’ Trump
37 would have to switch votes to reverse the results
There may be more than a few dissenters when the Electoral College meets Monday — though not enough to deny Donald Trump the presidency.
That’s according to R.J. Lyman, the lawyer quietly advising a couple dozen Republican electors — all deliberating individually — about their right to break with their states’ majority vote to oppose Trump.
It’s the last gasp of the never-Trump movement, and it faces long odds. The 538 members of the Electoral College meet in their state capitals on Dec. 19 to cast their votes for president.
Trump dismisses the effort and insists he won by the rules.
Yet a central purpose of Electoral College is to serve as a check on an electorate that could be duped by an unqualified or ethically compromised candidate, says Lyman. If the Founding Fathers wanted a simple points system, they wouldn’t have given the final say to a jury of “qualified” human beings, Lyman said in his first newspaper interview since beginning the consultations shortly after the Nov. 8 election.
“Spoiler alert: in 1789 they anticipated 2016,” said Lyman, a longtime friend and supporter of former GOP Massachusetts governor Bill Weld, who was the vice presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party. “They (electors) have to decide whether, in Hamilton’s words, the candidate to whom you are pledged is fit for office,” he said. Harvard law pro- fessor Lawrence Lessig also is providing legal assistance to potential “faithless electors.” He estimates as many as 20 electors could flip.
It’s the final hours of a broad effort to appeal to GOP electors that includes a separate web of Democrat-leaning activist groups pressuring electors.
Lyman is seeking to inform electors about their constitutional role at a critical moment in the nation’s history: the blessing of the nation’s first president-elect with no government or military experience who may face significant conflicts of interest in the White House due to his business empire.
Adding to the swirl of considerations are reports of Russian interference in the U.S. election.
“I’m not trying to undermine the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s ascendancy to the presidency. I am trying to make sure our institutions function the way they are supposed to,” Lyman said. The framers of the Constitution created a pause of more than a month between the election and the Dec. 19 meeting of electors to give the “men most capable of analyzing the qualities” of the incoming president time to deliberate outside the hyperpartisan rancor of a campaign, he said.
“They hold a constitutionally important obligation and every single one I’ve spoken with has understood that issue and that there’s reason for them not simply to follow the majority vote,” said Lyman.
The effort seems unlikely to succeed.
Trump won with 306 electoral votes, with 270 needed, so 37 Republican electors would need to flip their votes. Just one GOP elector, Chris Suprun of Texas, has publicly said he’d vote against Trump. The alternative to Trump, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, has told electors not to vote for him. Even if there were a mass defection, the matter would go to the Republican-led House of Representatives, which is unlikely to override their party’s president.
Further, the Republican National Committee has been conducting a parallel whip effort to ensure electors stick to the plan to vote for Trump — as opposed to Lyman, who describes his effort as educational and says it does not include regular contact with and pressure on the electors.
In private conversations, many have expressed a major concern, said Lyman: fear of legal retribution.
According to the Constitution, states are free to allocate electoral votes as they see fit. It was only in the 19th century that states acted to grant their votes on a winner-take-all system. Of the 29 states with “faithless electors’ laws,” only four of them has a specified penalty, said Lyman.
“A number of them are concerned about lawsuits, suing them personally, whether it’s the state party or the presumptive president-elect or his team. These aren’t rich people,” said Lyman, who is coordinating a legal defense fund.
“It’s a material amount of money” in the fund to cover legal expenses, he assured.
More than 4.8 million people have signed a change.org petition calling on “Conscientious Electors” to vote for Clinton. Websites have compiled electors’ email addresses, and more than 193,750 people have used asktheelectors.org.
“They (electors) have to decide whether, in Hamilton’s words, the candidate to whom you are pledged is fit for office.” R.J. Lyman