By ,
Published December 16, 2016
The members of the Electoral College will meet on Monday to decide the 45th president of the United States and, for the second time in less than 20 years, they will do so amid a controversy over the results of November’s general election.
While President-elect Donald Trump picked up 306 electoral votes on Election Day – well over the 270 needed to clinch the election – Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton’s lead in the popular has risen to 2.8 million over Trump as the last remaining postal votes are counted.
This disparity – along with claims by so-called “faithless electors” that they won’t vote for Trump – has made an already confusing electoral process even more convoluted.
To help readers understand the process and what’s at stake, FoxNews.com has prepared a cheat sheet about the Electoral College.
The Electoral College
The Faithless Elector
While the Electoral College vote is normally just a procedural step that gets overshadowed by the President-elect’s cabinet choices (the exception being 2000, with George W. Bush, Al Gore and the Florida recount), this year with Clinton winning the popular vote and the divisiveness of the election, there have been a number of electors who have said they might not cast their vote for the candidate who won their state.
Adding to the concerns of these faithless electors are assertions by the Obama administration that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally authorized the hacking of Democratic officials' email accounts in the run-up to the presidential election to help Trump's campaign.
When news broke late last week of the CIA's conclusion that Russia likely sought to influence the U.S. election on behalf of Trump, Pell and nine other electors — all but one of them Democrats — quickly crafted and published an unprecedented letter to U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper demanding a briefing.
Their letter, now with dozens of signatures, described the Electoral College as a deliberative body whose members have more than an "empty or formalistic task" to summarily cast their votes.
Despite Harvard professor – and former Democratic presidential candidate - Larry Lessig's claims earlier this week that 20 Republican Electoral College voters are considering flipping to vote against Donald Trump, a survey of electors taken by The Associated Press appears to suggest that there’s very little likelihood of derailing Trump's presidency in the Electoral College.
Only 19 of the 44 times the Electoral College has met have there been any faithless electors – and most of those involved only one elector. The most faithless electors ever came in 1832 when 30 electors from Pennsylvania refused to support the Democratic vice presidential candidate, Martin Van Buren and two National Republican Party electors from the state of Maryland refused to vote for presidential candidate Henry Clay and instead abstained.
Despite the loss of 30 votes, Martin Van Buren was elected as the vice president and Andrew Jackson president after receiving over 75 percent of the electoral votes.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/electoral-college-prepares-to-meet-under-old-rules-new-controversy