In the end, Donald Trump got thirty-six of Texas’ 38 electoral votes.
All but two of Texas’ 38 electors voted Monday to officially put Donald Trump in the White House, with one elector casting a ballot for Ohio Gov. John Kasich and another casting a ballot for a fellow Texan, former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul.
The votes from Texas were the ones that clinched the presidency of the United States for Trump, pushing the real estate mogul past the 270-vote threshold, according to Politico.
Elector Chris Suprun of Dallas had previously announced he would not support Trump. Another elector, Art Sisneros of Dayton, resigned as an elector, also in protest of Trump.
As electors voted, protesters’ chants picked up outside and could be heard from in the House chamber. They appeared to be saying specific electors’ names, followed by, “Save our democracy!”
The vote was unusually closely watched but largely expected: Both Suprun and Sisneros had shared their plans weeks in advance of the meeting. Suprun, however, did not announce until hours before the vote that he would instead vote for Kasich.
It was not immediately known who voted for Paul, the longtime congressman from Lake Jackson and three-time presidential hopeful. The process is secret ballot, meaning electors’ votes are not public unless they choose to disclose them.
According to the Statesman, the other maverick was a fellow named Bill Greene. As far as I know, he has not said why he did what he did. Art Sisneros was replaced as expected, as were three others who were apparently ineligible to serve.
I didn’t expect anything more exciting to happen, mostly because there was no one else out there joining Chris Suprun in his little exercise of conscience. I admit I harbored a teeny bit of hope that the Electoral College would Do Something about this, but I never really expected that. While I believe that the original intent of the founders was precisely for the Electoral College to prevent a man like Donald Trump from winning this election and that any legislative attempts to coerce them into voting a particular way are thus inherently unconstitutional, I agree that referring to such an intervention as being in any way “democratic” was misguided. The Electoral College is what it is, and we either accept that or we amend the Constitution to get rid of it. The extreme divergence between the popular vote and the electoral vote in this race is as strong an argument as one could want to make a change, but don’t hold your breath waiting for it.
Proud to see two Texans not vote for the walking tweeting dumpster fire that is Trump.
Time for the best and easiest path to a somewhat reform of the Electoral College with the National Popular Vote plan.
http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/
Interesting that more electors defected from Hillary than defected from Trump, even though Trump had more electors to lose.
B, missed the point again