{"id":60403,"date":"2016-12-15T07:57:08","date_gmt":"2016-12-15T11:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=60403"},"modified":"2016-12-15T07:58:37","modified_gmt":"2016-12-15T11:58:37","slug":"60403","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=60403","title":{"rendered":"Electors\u2019 Lawyer: Founding Fathers \u2018anticipated\u2019 Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"636173527880816249-ap-gop-2016-trump-finances-74503656\"<\/a>

(Photo: Charles Rex Arbogast, AP)<\/p><\/div>\n

There may be more than a few dissenters when the Electoral College meets Monday \u2014\u00a0though not enough to deny Donald Trump the presidency.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s according to R.J. Lyman, the lawyer quietly advising a couple dozen Republican electors \u2014 all deliberating individually \u2014 about their right to break with their states\u2019 majority vote to oppose Trump.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

STORY FROM THE MOTLEY FOOL<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

A high-yield dividend stock that\u2019s ridiculously cheap? Yep!<\/b><\/b><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Trump dismisses the effort as sour grapes and insists he won according to the rules.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019t have given the final say to a jury of \u201cqualified\u201d human beings, Lyman said in his first newspaper interview since beginning the consultations shortly after the Nov. 8 election.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSpoiler alert: in 1789 they anticipated 2016,\u201d said Lyman, a longtime friend and supporter of former GOP Massachusetts governor Bill Weld, who was the vice presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party.\u00a0\u201cThey (electors) have to decide whether, in Hamilton\u2019s words, the candidate to whom you are pledged is fit for office,\u201d he said.\u00a0Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig is\u00a0also providing legal assistance to potential \u201cfaithless electors.” He estimates up to 20 electors could flip.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s the final hours of a broad effort to appeal to GOP electors that includes a separate web of Democrat-leaning activist groups pressuring electors.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lyman is seeking\u00a0to inform electors about their constitutional role at a historically critical moment in the nation\u2019s history: the blessing of the nation\u2019s first president-elect with no government or military experience <\/span><\/a>who may face significant conflicts of interest in the White House due to his business empire.<\/span><\/p>\n

Adding to the swirl of considerations are reports about Russian interference in the U.S. election.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not trying to undermine the legitimacy of Donald Trump\u2019s ascendancy to the presidency. I am trying to make sure our institutions function the way they are supposed to,\u201d Lyman said.<\/span><\/p>\n

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 \u201cmen most capable of analyzing the qualities\u201d of the incoming president time to deliberate outside the hyper partisan rancor of a campaign, he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey hold a constitutionally important obligation and every single one I\u2019ve spoken with has understood that issue and that there\u2019s reason for them not simply to follow the majority vote,\u201d said Lyman.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anti-Trump groups to protest Electoral College, urging it to change the vote<\/b><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The effort faces long odds.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019d vote against Trump. The one alternative to Trump, Ohio Gov.\u00a0John Kasich, has told electors not to vote for him. Even if there were a mass defection, the matter would kick to the Republican-led House of Representatives, which is unlikely to override their own party\u2019s president.<\/span><\/p>\n

Further, the Republican National Committee has been conducting a parallel whip effort to make sure electors stick to the plan to vote for Trump \u2014\u00a0as opposed to Lyman, who describes his effort as educational and says it does not include regular contact with and pressure on the electors.<\/span><\/p>\n

In his private conversations, many have expressed a major concern, said Lyman: fear of legal retribution.<\/span><\/p>\n

Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, who is advising anti-Trump electors.\u00a0<\/b>(Photo: Scott Eisen, Getty Images)<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

According to the Constitution, states are free to allocate electoral votes as they see fit. It was only during the 19th century that states acted \u2014\u00a0on their own \u2014\u00a0to grant their votes on a winner-take-all system. Of the 29 states with \u201cfaithless electors\u2019 laws,\u201d only four of them has a specified penalty, said Lyman.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA number of them are concerned about lawsuits, suing them personally, whether it\u2019s the state party or the presumptive president elect or his team. These aren\u2019t rich people,\u201d said Lyman, who is coordinating a legal defense fund.<\/span><\/p>\n

Clinton’s team backs electors’ demand for an intelligence briefing<\/b><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a material amount of money\u201d in the fund to cover legal expenses, he assured.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump will have lost the national popular vote by a larger margin of votes than anybody in U.S. history<\/span><\/a>. Further, the real estate billionaire is facing questions about potential conflicts of interest relating to his global business holdings that could violate the Constitution\u2019s Emoluments Clause if he fails to divest.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump rescheduled until January a news conference originally scheduled for Thursday to clarify his plans for separating himself from his company.<\/span><\/p>\n

A separate\u00a0effort to pressure electors will include thousands of protesters who plan to descend on all 50 state capitals. Eighteen celebrities, including Martin Sheen and Debra Messing, a prominent Hillary Clinton supporter, also cut a video trying to rally the Electoral College.<\/span><\/p>\n

More than 4.8 million people have signed a change.org petition calling on \u201cConscientious Electors\u201d to vote Clinton into office. Websites have compiled electors\u2019 email addresses, and more than 193,750 people have used the site\u00a0asktheelectors.org<\/span><\/a>\u00a0to contact delegates.<\/span><\/p>\n

If a couple dozen electors defect, that would be a \u201chistoric\u201d revolt, said Ryan Clayton of Americans Take Action, among the progressive groups organizing the effort. It\u2019s \u201cwhy the RNC is doing a whip count of Electors and it\u2019s why Donald Trump is threatening electors <\/span><\/a>for using their Constitutional right to vote their conscience.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In \u201cThe Federalist Papers,\u201d Alexander Hamilton wrote the Constitution is designed to ensure \u201cthat the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Since the founding of the nation, there have been 23,449 votes for a future president of the U.S. In that time, just one\u00a0of them \u2014\u00a0a protest vote for a philosophy professor in 1972 \u2014\u00a0has been for someone with no prior government or\u00a0military experience, says Lyman.<\/span><\/p>\n

Still, in a few random calls by USA TODAY to Ohio\u00a0electors who might be most disposed to voting against Trump, there was no indication of dissent.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mary Anne Christie, an elector from Cincinnati who supported Kasich, said she believes Russia was trying to help Trump. \u201cI\u2019ve been in this political arena for years,\u201d she said. \u201cYou had to have known just watching the things coming out\u201d since \u201call the emails were only about Hillary,\u201d she said. That said, Christie said Trump hurt himself a lot, including his prior comments about women, and the voters chose him anyway.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe was creating his own problems, but yet he won,\u201d said Christie, who plans to cast her vote for Trump.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There may be more than a few dissenters when the Electoral College meets Monday \u2014\u00a0though not enough to deny Donald Trump the presidency. That\u2019s according to R.J. Lyman, the lawyer quietly advising a couple dozen Republican electors \u2014 all deliberating … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}