MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - A national groundswell of protests and other activities aimed at getting the Electoral College not to vote for Republican Donald Trump for president isn’t expected to have any impact in Vermont. The state’s three electors are required by law to vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton because she won the popular vote in the state.
Vermont’s version of the Electoral College will take place as the state’s three Democratic electors gather Monday at the Statehouse to cast the state’s votes.
Any anti-Trump activities in Vermont are not likely to change a pro-Clinton outcome in the Green Mountain State, said Conor Casey, executive director of the Vermont Democratic Party.
While some national groups have suggested a compromise candidate be elected in place of either Trump or Clinton, Casey said such pleadings most likely would not change the outcome in Vermont - partly because state law locks Vermont’s electors in to the winner of the popular vote in the state.
“We’re certainly not in the business of advocating that anybody break the law in our state,” Casey said, adding, “I don’t see that it would at all help in the effort to prevent Trump from becoming president.”
All three of Vermont’s electors - Gov. Peter Shumlin, state representative and Democratic Party Vice Chairman Tim Jerman, and Martha Allen, president of the Vermont chapter of the National Education Association teachers’ union, said in recent interviews that they would vote for Clinton.
Jerman called the expected protests “a cry of anguish about the outcome of the election.” But, in Vermont, he said, “I think three people will go to the capitol and vote for Hillary Clinton and that’s about it.”
Jerman was among those who said that Clinton’s winning the national popular vote and likely losing in the Electoral College would give new impetus to scrapping or more likely circumventing an institution for electing presidents that dates from the 1787 drafting of the Constitution. Trump is believed to have won 306 of the 538 electoral votes available nationwide.
Vermont passed a law in 2011 joining the state to a “national popular vote” movement. Backers of that say their aim is to get a coalition of states whose electoral votes add up to at least 270 to require their electors to vote for the candidate who has won the most individual votes nationwide.
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