A national poll, prior to Monday’s vote by the Electoral College that made the election of Donald Trump official, shows an almost even split between those who think the process works just fine and those who think it’s time to scrap the Electoral College and let the popular vote decide presidential elections.
Prior to Monday's Electoral College vote, McClatchy DC reported results of a McClatchy-Marist Poll that found that about 52 percent of registered voters think the popular vote winner should be selected as the leader of the free world, while 45 percent think the Electoral College works just fine.
And the split is very much along party lines.
78 percent of Democrats think the popular vote should be used for determining the presidential election outcome, compared with 29 percent of Republicans and 46 percent of independent voters, the poll showed. On the flip side, 67 Republicans favor keeping the Electoral College, compared to 19 percent of Democrats and 52 percent of independents.
According to USA Today, leading up to Monday’s Electoral College vote, electors across the country received thousands of emails and phone calls arguing that Trump is unqualified, and has too many conflicts of interest to be the United States’ commander in chief.
As USA Today also reported, recent confirmation by the FBI and CIA, that the Russian government hacked Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee in an effort to help Trump win the election, intensified pleas to keep Trump out of the White House.
As ABC News reports, the Electoral College consists of 538 members, the sum of the total number of U.S. Senators and House members plus three additional electors for Washington, D.C. The electors gathered Monday in each of the 50 state capitals to cast their votes. Of the 538 members, Trump had 306 who were pledged to him and needed 270 to win, so at least 37 electors would have had to be “faithless” and vote for Clinton or another candidate for Trump to lose.
As Yahoo News reports, 23 states and the District of Columbia have laws that require electors to vote as pledged, including Colorado, Oklahoma and Nebraska. “Faithless electors” are allowed in Kansas and Texas.
Had Trump not won the Electoral College vote, as USA Today reports, the Republican-led House of Representatives would have been tasked with determining the outcome of the election.
http://cookpolitical.com/story/10174 - Cook Political Report keeps a running tally of the national vote