RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - Fifteen people selected with the promise that they’d cast North Carolina’s electoral votes for Donald Trump followed through on Monday, ignoring a long-shot bid to change their minds with the argument the Republican wasn’t fit to become president.
Presidential electors met in Raleigh’s antebellum Capitol Building to cast the state’s Electoral College votes for Trump, who won North Carolina’s popular vote by 3 percentage points over Democrat Hillary Clinton. The Electoral College vote is part of the formal process to choose the next president based upon state-by-state voting results.
Last month’s popular vote determined that electors nominated by the North Carolina Republican Party from across the state would cast the state’s electoral votes.
Some Democrats and others upset with the Nov. 8 results urged electors in states not to cast their ballot for Trump.
Prior to Monday’s vote, about 100 people gathered outside the building to protest voting for Trump.
Jennifer Griffith of Durham came to the demonstration because she believes Trump is a showman and con artist whose presidency will endanger the US. She says the Electoral College was established in the Constitution as an insurance policy against putting a dangerous demagogue in the White House and hopes the electors will reflect on that now.
“In voting in the way they have decided to vote, they are ignoring the other constitutional aspect of their duties,” Griffith said.
North Carolina elector David Speight of Lexington said Monday he got about 500 letters and more emails urging him not to cast his ballot for Trump.
Speight says the effort to influence electors was never going anywhere. He notes North Carolina law requires that electors who contradict their promise to back their party’s nominee are replaced, their contrary vote discarded and fined $500.
“We’re bound electors, so it’s a done deal — they will get 15 votes for Trump out of North Carolina,” Speight said.
Eric Hanson of Minneapolis said he wrote to all of the Republican electors around the country. He said he grew up in a staunch Republican household and cast his first presidential vote for Republican Gerald Ford in his unsuccessful 1976 campaign. But Hanson said in an email Monday he could not believe that the GOP would support as president a man who won a narrow electoral victory with the help of Russian president Vladimir Putin.
CIA Director John Brennan has said the U.S. intelligence community is in agreement that Russia tried to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, though there’s no evidence Moscow succeeded in helping Trump win. The CIA blamed Russia for hacking the Democratic National Committee in a bid to help Trump defeat Clinton.
“I tried to emphasize that if this unfit man is installed in the White House all the harm that occurs and all the corruptions and treasons we learn about too late will be blamed on the Republican Party that installed him,” Hanson said.
North Carolina electors said they had pledged to uphold the choice of the state’s voters, which meant sending Trump to the White House. They met Sunday to rehearse the ceremony around casting their ballots. Some said they received harassing calls and letters from people demanding they change their vote, but that increased their determination to support Trump.
The Electoral College was incorporated into the U.S. Constitutional as a compromise between those who wanted popular elections for president and those who wanted no public input.
The Electoral College has 538 members, with the number allocated to each state based on how many representatives it has in the House plus one for each senator. The District of Columbia gets three, despite the fact that the home to Congress has no vote in Congress.
To be elected president, the winner must get at least half plus one - or 270 electoral votes. North Carolina and most other states give all their electoral votes to whichever candidate wins that state’s popular vote.
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