SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) - All five of New Mexico’s electors cast their votes Monday for Hillary Clinton, while some openly expressed disappointment about the outcome of the presidential election and frustration with the Electoral College.
Sign-waving, anti-Donald Trump protesters watched from a doorway as Democratic electors signed a “certificate of vote” that will be delivered to the U.S. Congress. Trump formally won the presidency a few hours later by surpassing 270 electoral votes.
“I was looking forward to having Hillary Rodham Clinton as our next president,” said first-time elector John Padilla of Albuquerque, at a public meeting of the electors inside the New Mexico Secretary of State’s Office. “She won the national election with the most votes. We just did not win the Electoral College.”
Clinton won 48.6 percent of the statewide vote in New Mexico to Donald Trump’s 40 percent. Libertarian Candidate Gary Johnson took 9.3 percent of ballots.
Another elector, Noyola Archibeque of Las Vegas, New Mexico, said after Monday’s vote that she personally would like to see the Electoral College revised and possibly eliminated.
“It’s hurt us twice,” she said, referring also to the 2000 defeat of Democrat Al Gore, who narrowly won New Mexico and earned the most ballots nationwide.
“We’re all feeling the same way, we’re all feeling sad” she said of the Democratic New Mexico electors.
State law gives little leeway to New Mexico electors, making it a felony to vote for anyone but the candidate of the party that nominated them as electors.
Earlier in the day, more than 100 protesters gathered outside the state Capitol in Santa Fe in sub-freezing temperatures to chants of “dump Trump,” and “no hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here.”
Psychotherapist and Clinton supporter Mary Simonini of Taos was holding out hope that electors in states that voted Republican would think about the future of the world and avoid voting for Trump. She held aloft a sign that read, “Vote your conscience, dump Trump.”
“We support all of the people in all the states - the red states - to really speak up” against Trump, she said.
At least two of New Mexico’s electors favored Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary, which Clinton won with the support of all nine local superdelegates to the Democratic National Convention.
Padilla, a Sanders delegate to the Democratic National Convention, and elector Roxanne Allen of Albuquerque later become enthusiastically Clinton backers.
Allen, a retired radio station administrator, said electors should vote their conscience and make sure presidential candidates are qualified.
Padilla, a retired fire department employee, says it was his duty to abide by the voters’ wishes.
Ahead of Monday’s vote, he said the Electoral College system in the long run provides extra influence to less populated states such as New Mexico in presidential elections.
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