Washington – Donald Trump on Monday received the outcome he expected from the US Electoral College, a majority among its 538 members, sealing his victory in the US presidential election and clearing the way for his inauguration on January 20.
An attempt to block the Trump win by so-called “faithless” electors fell far short.
The Electoral College votes took place all day in the 50 individual states and the District of Columbia. Electors from Texas were the last to vote and they put Trump over the 270 threshold, according to news reports, bringing his tally to 304. Clinton received 228 votes.
Trump called it a “historic electoral landslide victory” even though his Electoral College margin ranks 46th among 58 US presidential elections.
“The official votes cast by the Electoral College exceeded the 270 required to secure the presidency by a very large margin, far greater than ever anticipated by the media,” he said in a statement.
The US electoral process defines the winning candidate as the one who receives a majority of the 538 members of the Electoral College, who are typically state party officials or people who are close to the candidate. They are chosen by their state political parties.
Voters who cast their ballots in the November 8 election were effectively voting to determine which candidate would receive their state’s electoral votes.
Monday’s vote was all but a foregone conclusion because Trump was declared the winner after clinching enough states to put him over the 270 threshold.
His victory came despite Clinton’s victory in the popular vote and alleged Russian meddling in the US election process, prompting calls for electors to break with their state party leaders and reverse their votes.
Six electors did just that, bucking their pledges, according to a count by Politico. Two of them had been pledged to Trump, and four of them to Clinton.
The Electoral College vote is usually perfunctory, but this year it was in the spotlight because of the appeals for electors to vote against Trump.
Electors were flooded with emails and telephone calls pressuring them not to vote for Trump, according to media reports. In addition, nearly 5 million people signed an online petition aimed at preventing Trump from becoming president.
Trump issued a comment about the effort on Twitter.
“If my many supporters acted and threatened people like those who lost the election are doing, they would be scorned and called terrible names!” Trump said.
Among New York’s electors was former president Bill Clinton, who cast his vote for his wife.
“She fought through everything,” Clinton told reporters. “And she prevailed against it all but at the end we had the Russians and the FBI deal and she couldn’t prevail against them.”
The Electoral College system was written into the Constitution at the country’s inception as a compromise between politicians who wanted Congress to choose the president and those who wanted voters to choose the country’s leader.
The politicians in favour of it believed it would safeguard Americans from the election of demagogues and tyrannical rulers. In more recent times it has been described as a vestige of another era.
-dpa
