Trump officially secures title of U.S. President-elect amid protest, turmoil
2016-12-20 16:11:31.0
WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 : (Xinhua) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Monday officially won the Electoral College vote, securing his future four-year presidency amid protest and turmoil fuelled by U.S. intelligence agencies' consensus about Russia's alleged election meddling.
"The official votes cast by the Electoral College
exceeded the 270 required to secure the presidency by a very large
margin," Trump said in a statement released Monday evening.
"With this historic step we can look forward to
the bright future ahead," Trump said, promising to work hard to unite the
country and to "be the President of all Americans."
A total of 538 electors, chosen by their state
political parties, convened on Monday in Washington D.C. and 50 statehouses
across the country to cast two votes - one for the president and one for the
vice president.
Before Monday's electoral vote, which has long been
regarded as little more than a formality, many Republican electors have been
urged to defect from Trump amid continuous protests over Trump's election
victory.
Major U.S. intelligence leaders have expressed support
for an assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that Russia
intervened in the 2016 U.S. presidential election partly to help Trump win the
White House.
The hope of the so-called "Hamilton
Electors" was to dump Trump by having at least 37 Republican electors vote
against the will of their states so as to deprive Trump of the 270 electoral
vote majority.
However, in the end all but two Republican electors
stayed loyal to the party's candidate, keeping Trump well above the 270
electoral vote threshold.
Both the two Republican "faithless electors"
are from Texas. One voted for Ohio Governor John Kasich and the other for
former Texas congressman Ron Paul. In comparison, on the Democratic side, there
were at least eight "defectors" emerging from the Electoral College
in five states, though three of them were later replaced by state election
officials under their state law.
In Minnesota, Hawaii and Colorado, each state had an
elector voting for Senator Bernie Sanders, Clinton's strongest rival during the
Democratic primaries.
In Washington State, three Democratic electors voted
for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who is actually an African-American
Republican, while one voted for Faith Spotted Eagle, a Native American
environmental activist opposed to the Dakota Access Pipeline.
David Bright, a Maine Democratic elector, announced
early on Monday that he would vote for Sanders instead of Clinton so as to help
the embattled Democratic Party woo back young voters.
"Hillary Clinton will not become President, and
there is nothing I can do about that. Knowing this, I was left to find a
positive statement I could make with my vote," said Bright on Facebook.
However, he finally recast his vote for Clinton after being deemed improper.
Most U.S. states have laws compelling electors to
follow their state's popular vote result. However, there is no federal or
Constitutional directive for that. Local media said only nine U.S. electors in
the past 100 years broke from their states' Election Day results.
The number of electors each state has is equal to its
number of representatives and senators in Congress - 538 in total, with those
extra three electors coming from Washington, District of Columbia. Among them
are state party leaders, elected officials or just individuals with a personal
connection to a presidential candidate.The Congress, where Republicans hold a
majority, is set to certify the vote on Jan. 6. RSS
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