Trump secures electoral votes
Donald Trump clinched the presidency Monday as members of the electoral college cast ballots declaring him the victor, a perfunctory conclusion to the most stunning presidential contest in modern history.
Trump became the winner Monday afternoon after electors from Texas cast ballots and put him over the 270 electoral votes needed to win. Results will be officially announced Jan. 6 in a special joint session of Congress.
While Democrat Hillary Clinton amassed a nearly 3 million-vote lead in the popular vote, Trump won the state-by-state electoral map – making him president-elect. That political dichotomy sparked special
scrutiny and intense lobbying of electors by Trump's opponents in recent weeks, including mass protests. It also drew outsized attention to the usually overlooked, constitutionally obligated gatherings of 538 electors in 50 states and the District of Columbia.
The mostly symbolic calls for an electoral college rejection of Trump grew after revelations of a CIA assessment of Russian hacking that could have boosted Trump's campaign and, in the view of many Trump critics, raised doubts about his legitimacy.
Trump has dismissed the intelligence community's analysis of Russia's role in the election and has boasted of a "historic" electoral landslide. But his 305 to 232 win over Clinton ranks just 46th out of 58 electoral college results.
His detractors called on electors to buck the president-elect in favor of Clinton - or Trump's running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, or other Republicans such as Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
Ultimately, Kasich earned one vote from an elector in Texas. So did former representative Ron Paul, R-Texas. In Washington state, three electors cast votes for former secretary of state Colin Powell, while another voted for Faith Spotted Eagle, a member of the Sioux Native American tribe from South Dakota who opposes the Dakota Access Pipeline. Pence earned the requisite electoral votes to serve as vice president, but in Washington state, Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., also earned some votes.
Across the country, Trump critics braved cold temperatures and rallied outside state capitol buildings in hopes that electors might act as an emergency brake on Trump.
In Pennsylvania, which voted for a Republican president for the first time since 1988, a few hundred shell-shocked Democrats protested in Harrisburg while 20 electors backed Trump. In Utah, protesters booed and shouted "shame on you" as the state's six electors cast votes for Trump in a capitol building conference room in Salt Lake City.
In Florida, a crucial swing state where Trump defeated Clinton by about a percentage point, Trump won all 29 electoral votes. Trump also earned all 16 votes in Michigan, another state that flipped to Republicans for the first time since 1988.
On the streets of Washington, D.C., two dozen protesters assembled outside Trump's hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, singing songs such as "We Shall Overcome." Some held signs, including one that read, "Resist Putin's Puppet." The District's three electors later gathered at city hall just a block from Trump's hotel.
In Albany, New York, former President Bill Clinton sat in the state Senate chamber as an elector and cast one of the Empire State's 29 electoral votes for his wife.
"I've never cast a vote I was prouder of," he told reporters after the meeting.
Despite the pleas of Trump opponents, most electors had said for weeks that they planned to cast votes reflecting the will of their home states.
"Any choice was better than Hillary, so it's not a hard choice for me," Oklahoma Republican elector Charles Potts said in a recent interview.
Richard Snelgrove, an elector who also serves as a Salt Lake County, Utah, council member, said he received "thousands of emails, hundreds of letters and a few phone calls - most of them respectful, a couple over the top, and a few that have been downright threatening."
Most of the messages asked him to vote for Clinton on the grounds that she won the national popular vote. But Snelgrove said there was no justification for such a move.
"No one elected me king, and it's my job to reflect the will of the people of Utah," he said. "They chose Trump."
In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Ray-Ellen Kavey, 68, had driven from neighboring New York state to try to convince Pennsylvania's electors to switch allegiance.
"I think the Constitution charges the electors with preventing exactly what is happening here - a hostile takeover of our government by a bigot who has been supported by Russia," Kavey said. "I know nothing will come of this, but my conscience won't let me do any less."
In Austin, Joni Ashbrook, 64, and her best friend, Mary Robinson, 62, stood outside of the pink granite Texas Capitol Building, holding two ends of a banner on a wooden stick that Ashbrook sewed. "Resist Trump's Agenda," the sign read.
Ashbrook, a retired fourth-grade science teacher, said she knew that the electors would likely vote for Trump, but said she had been troubled by Trump's Cabinet picks and disregard for global warming.
"I'd like for them to be very thoughtful about what's going on around them," Ashbrook said about the electors. "But this is just another way for us to say 'no.' "
In Maryland, all 10 of the state's electors voted for Clinton during a meeting in the Governor's Reception Room at the State House in Annapolis.