Chronicle Editor
WASHINGTON. — A majority of American voters favour delaying the Electoral College vote scheduled for today until electors can be fully briefed on alleged Russian interference in the election, according to a new poll conducted by YouGov.
The survey, sponsored by the progressive advocacy group Avaaz, found 52 percent of people supportive of stalling the vote.
A surprisingly high number of people — 46 percent — were also willing to support so-called “faithless electors,” the name given to members of the Electoral College who spurn the vote of their home state and vote for a different candidate instead.
President-elect Donald Trump’s opponents have been pressuring electors to break with their state’s voters, and a law firm has even offered pro bono, confidential legal advice to any elector curious about his or her options. Avaaz has collected thousands of signatures on a petition calling for the vote to be delayed.
Trump won a fairly wide Electoral College victory on Election Day, but Hillary Clinton is on pace to beat him in the popular vote by some 3 million.
In a sign of how divided the country is, however, more than 1 in 4 Republicans believe that Trump in fact bested Clinton in the popular vote.
That belief may stem from a false claim Trump himself made on Twitter, when he said that he would have won the popular vote had millions of people not voted illegally. — Huffington Post.
Peter Tanyanyiwa
Online Reporter