An unprecedented number of Electoral College members may break with their states' popular vote results when casting their votes on Dec. 19. Though it's unlikely they will alter the results of the 2016 election, it could have a ripple effect in state and Constitutional law.

Several electors have already indicated they plan to dissent from their states' votes as part of a last-ditch effort to prevent Donald Trump from reaching the 270 electoral votes necessary to claim the presidency.

Texas Republican elector Christopher Suprun in a New York Times op-ed piece declared his intention to cast what is called a "faithless" vote, calling for electors to unify behind a Republican alternative. In Colorado, two Democratic electors filed a lawsuit challenging state laws that require them to vote for the winner of the state's popular vote in hopes of freeing up electors nationwide to become unbound. P. Bret Chiafalo of Washington and Michael Baca of Colorado have launched the "Hamilton Electors," a group inspired by Alexander Hamilton's explanation of the Electoral College, in an effort to stop Trump.

"Donald Trump is unfit for the presidency and that doesn't come just from my personal judgement, it comes from conversations that I've had with Republicans, Independents, Democrats," said Robert Nemanich, one of the Colorado electors suing, in an interview with local Fox 21 News.

To keep Trump from reaching the 270 electoral votes necessary to become president, at least 37 electors would have to defect. That would throw the election to the House of Representatives. While the Republican-controlled body could nonetheless elect Trump, the rogue electors hope they would support another GOP candidate instead -- Ohio Governor John Kasich, Arizona Senator John McCain or former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, for example.

Kasich on Tuesday put out a statement on the push, asking electors not to vote for him.

"The president elect won a pretty decisive victory last month," said Trump spokesman Jason Miller when asked about the potential rogue electors on a call with the press on Thursday, adding that Trump's numbers have "continued to move up" since his election, presumably referring to opinion polls.

He said that regardless of the "side talk," whether Jill Stein's "recount shenanigans" or the electoral college defections, "the voters have spoken, and we think that folks will do what the voters have asked them to do, but it's not something that we're particularly concerned about."

Twenty-nine states have laws that enable state parties to extract oaths from their electors, and a handful of states criminalize faithless electors. There is no federal law requiring electors to vote in accordance with the results of the popular votes in their states.

"That issue remains unsettled as a matter of federal law," said Ned Foley, director of Election Law at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law.

The 1952 Supreme Court case Ray v. Blair ruled that it is constitutional for states to require pledges from electors, but it did not address whether electors have to actually vote for their pledged candidate. Most legal scholars agree they don't.

"Most constitutional law scholars believe that these laws that forbid faithless electors or criminalize faithless electors are probably not constitutionally permissible or wouldn't pass constitutional muster," said Robert Alexander, a professor of political science at Ohio Northern University and expert in the Electoral College. "An elector is ultimately an officer of the Constitution."

Faithless electors have appeared before. In 2004, for example, an anonymous Minnesota elector cast his or her presidential vote for John Edwards (misspelled as "John Ewards"), Democratic candidate John Kerry's vice-presidential pick, presumably by accident.

Electors voting faithlessly en masse is extremely rare.

The last time it happened was in 1836, when nearly two dozen electors refused to vote for Martin Van Buren's vice presidential running mate, Richard Mentor Johnson, because of his relationship with an African American woman. The maneuver tossed the vice-presidential vote to the Senate, which ultimately elected Johnson anyway.

"We've had faithless electors in nine of the last 17 elections, but the idea of multiple defections, we have not seen that in years," said Alexander.

While 2016's rogue electors are unlikely to be successful in their bid to affect the results of the election, their push could result in more states enacting laws to bind or criminalize faithless votes.

The Uniform Law Commission, a nonprofit association that provides and promotes uniform legislation for states and jurisdictions, has put forth the Uniform Faithful Presidential Electors Act. The act allows for the extraction of a state-administered pledge of faithfulness, and if an elector acts in violation of that pledge, he or she is immediately removed and replaced.

Minnesota, Nebraska, Montana and Nevada have enacted the legislation, and if many electors act faithlessly this year, there could be more.

"I wouldn't be surprised at all if after this year a number of other state legislatures take another look at that uniform law and the problem of faithless electors," said Foley.

More states enacting such laws could potentially push the issue to the courts, which could ultimately lead to a court decision as to whether electors are constitutionally bound to cast their votes a certain way. If the courts were to rule that electors are independent, as most legal scholars expect, it could free up electors permanently to cast votes as they please.

"That's part of what the Colorado electors are doing is they're testing the water on this independence argument," said Alexander.

"My personal belief and judgement is that Donald Trump is so dangerous to the representative form of government, regardless, that him in office is more dangerous than the mechanisms that would be put in play to stop him from office," said Nemanich.

Even if electors are legally independent, political calculation may keep them from breaking with their states' votes anyway. Simply put: they don't want to risk their own political futures by going rogue.

"That's probably more important than any law forbidding a faithless elector, their own standing in the party," said Alexander.