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A President is Elected!  

January 2, 2017

On November 8th, citizens from the fifty states chose their Presidential electors.  Donald Trump gained the equivalent of 306 electors, winning three states -- Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin -- which over the past several decades had solidly voted Democratic.   Since the November election, several highly organized groups, primarily from the left, have continued to mount an effort to undermine the outcome of the election rather than acknowledge the message clearly sent by the voters.  

Instead of accepting the results, Green Party candidate Jill Stein announced plans in late November to request recounts in three Rust Belt states which were won by Trump.  She raised seven million dollars, mostly from Democrats, enough to effectively pay for the requested recounts.  The Democratic candidate, who viciously derided Trump because he wouldn’t promise to automatically accept the results of the election if shenanigans were discovered, quickly added her support to Stein’s recount effort.  A Federal Court blocked the Michigan and Pennsylvania recounts in part because Stein wasn’t the “aggrieved party” (i.e., she didn’t have “standing”).   In the Wisconsin recount, Trump gained 116 votes.

Some of Hollywood’s liberals’ conducted an ad campaign urging Trump electors to be “unfaithful.”  In one ad, Martin Sheen, who played the President in the "West Wing" TV show, was quoted, “As you know, our Founding Fathers built the Electoral College to safeguard the American people from the dangers of a demagogue and to ensure that the presidency only goes to someone who is to an ’eminent degree and down with the requisite qualifications.”  We wonder what these groups would’ve said if the Democratic candidate -- who committed acts that would have landed other not so powerful people in jail -- had won the election. 

Other efforts included organized nationwide email bashes pleading with Republican electors to refrain from voting for their candidate.  Republican electors received thousands of email messages, in some cases tens of thousands.  There were even a few dissenters who chose a darker path sending death-threats.  

The final elector results from the Electoral College were:  Donald Trump 304 (two “unfaithful”), the unsuccessful Democratic nominee 227 (five “unfaithful”), Colin Powell 3, Spotted Eagle 1, Ron Paul 1, John Kasich 1, and Bernie Sanders 1.  Four electors in states won by the Democratic candidate were replaced after refusing to vote for the states winning candidate.  The results of the “unfaithful” Electoral College vote illustrates how real the possibility for the ultimate conflict could have been, when a few days before the General Election, several so called reputable pollsters laid out highly probable scenarios showing neither candidate gaining more than 5 above the needed 270.
  
We read a lot about who won the popular vote.  The large vote differences in New York City, Los Angeles County, and San Francisco County, completely makeup that difference.  To allow the wishes of two or three populous cities/counties to dictate their views on the rest of the nation is exactly what the Founders wanted to prevent.  Our view?  The Electoral College worked as designed once again. 

Mark, Bill and John


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