Donald Trump officially became president-elect Donald Trump shortly after 3:30 pm Monday, as he secured a majority of the Electoral College vote and easily overcame a last-ditch effort by protesters to keep him out of the White House.
Despite efforts to convince Trump electors to deliver a conscience vote for a different candidate, Trump avoided a last-minute collapse and received the clinching 270th vote when Texas’s 38 electoral votes were announced.
Despite claims from Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig that more than 20 Republican electors were considering voting against Trump, these so-called “faithless electors” largely failed to materialize, with state after state delivering its electoral votes exactly in accordance with the popular vote result. The first faithless elector came shortly after 2 pm, when a Maine elector cast his vote for Sen. Bernie Sanders instead of Hillary Clinton. Another elector in Minnesota attempted to cast his vote for Sanders instead of Clinton, but Minnesota state law prohibits such faithless electors, so he was replaced by an alternate who supported Clinton. (RELATED: Judge Rules Faithless Electors Are Replaceable)
Several Republican electors were outright dismissive toward the aggressive efforts to make them change their vote.
PHOTO: My daughter Reagan helping me take a bin of liberal letters begging me to not cast my Electoral Vote 4 @realDonaldTrump to curb #MAGA pic.twitter.com/ecUWLLPISf
— Christian Ziegler (@ChrisMZiegler) December 18, 2016
— Christian Ziegler (@ChrisMZiegler) December 18, 2016
The Electoral College vote will be confirmed by Congress in early January, and Trump will then be sworn in as president on January 20.
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