The Electoral College has affirmed Donald
Trump as the nation’s 45th president, pushing him past the 270-vote threshold for
election, with scant evidence of the anti-Trump revolt among electors that some
of his critics had hoped would occur.
Republican electors in Texas vaulted
Mr. Trump past the 270 mark, granting him all but two of their 38 ballots in a
ceremony in the State Capitol in Austin.
In the House chamber, where the
electors met, the vote was greeted with a standing ovation by citizens and
Republican officials who had come to witness the event. Outside, perhaps 100
protesters waved placards and chanted “Save our democracy” in a vain effort to
persuade electors to reject the Republican nominee.
Normally a political footnote, the
electoral vote acquired an unexpected element of drama this winter after Mr.
Trump’s upset of HillaryClinton, who received 2.86 million more popular votes
but won in states that totaled only 232 electoral votes. The states Mr. Trump
won held 306 electoral votes.
His electoral victory spawned a determined effort to
block his path to the presidency by grass-roots advocates who saw him as unfit
for the White House and by some who saw him as a threat to the political
system.
Presidential electors — and particularly Republican
electors, who are bound by tradition and often state law to support Mr. Trump —
were inundated with phone calls, emails and even threats demanding that they
vote for someone else. Leaders of groups that were lobbying the electors had
privately believed they had a chance to persuade enough Republican electors to
defect, denying him an Electoral College majority and throwing the election to
the House of Representatives. But by late Monday, only a handful of electors
had broken ranks.
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