Ten of the 538 members of the electoral college who have the ultimate power to put Donald Trump into the White House are demanding that intelligence agencies inform them of any ongoing investigations into alleged links between the president-elect and his coterie and Russian government attempts to sway the election in his favor.



The 10 electors are all Democratic bar one – Chris Suprun, the Republican from Texas who plans to defect from Trump. They include all four Democratic electors in New Hampshire, as well as Christine Pelosi from California, the daughter of the Democratic leader of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.

In a joint letter to the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, they argue that their duty as electors is not just to vote blindly according to their party decree when the electoral college convenes on 19 December. They also have the responsibility to question the winning presidential candidate’s fitness for highest office, they say, and to guard against any foreign interference in the process.

The authors quote Alexander Hamilton from the 1787 Federalist Papers in which the founding fathers stated that a key role of the electoral college was to prevent a “desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils”. In their letter, which was first disclosed by Politico, the electors go on to say that they are facing precisely this duty in an election year in which the CIA has reportedly concluded with “high confidence” that Russia conducted a covert effort to influence the US election.

“During the campaign Russia actively attempted to influence the election outcome through cyber attacks on our political institutions and a comprehensive propaganda campaign coordinated through WikiLeaks and other outlets,” the electors say.

Trump has dismissed the claim of Russian covert interference on his behalf as “ridiculous”.

The electors’ letter is the latest sign of an unprecedented level of unrest among the traditionally staid electoral college. So far, eight electors around the country have indicated that they plan to vote against their party affiliation on 19 December as a protest statement against Trump, all but one of whom are Democratic.

Several of those defectors have signed up to a new campaign called Hamilton electors. It argues that the 538 members of the electoral college were invested by the founding fathers with the duty to block a demagogue or someone morally unfit for the presidency from gaining the White House.

Under the peculiarities of the US system of choosing presidents, the occupant of the White House is selected not by a direct popular vote of the American people but indirectly by electors who are in turn nominated by the winning party in each state.

This year Hillary Clinton conclusively won the popular vote, by some 2,654,600 votes and counting. But she even more conclusively lost the electoral college by 306 electors to 232.

Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta said on Monday the Obama administration “owes it to the American people” to explain the extent of Russian interference in the US presidential election.

In a statement, Podesta said the campaign fully supported the electors’ efforts, declaring that “never before in the history of our Republic have we seen such an effort to undermine the bedrock of our democracy”.

“The bipartisan electors’ letter raises very grave issues involving our national security,” said Podesta, whose personal email account was hacked and selectively published online by WikiLeaks. “Electors have a solemn responsibility under the Constitution and we support their efforts to have their questions addressed.”

The rebellion within the electoral college is a sign of the political mayhem that Trump’s victory on 8 November has unleashed, though few expect that this year’s rebellion will have any definitive impact on the outcome of the race. Should all eight electors who have announced they will defect go ahead with the promise, it would be the first time since 1912 that more than one elector has broken ranks with their party.

