The Editorial Board

USA TODAY

Ever since the election, Republican members of the Electoral College have been inundated with emails, personal letters, open letters and celebrity videos calling on them, in essence, to bolt from Donald Trump when the electors gather Monday in each state to cast votes for the next president.

A website that has gone viral is offering addresses of 284 electors so people can implore them personally “not to vote for Trump.” And a Change.org petition, signed by more than 4.8 million, calls on electors to “support the national popular vote winner,” Democrat Hillary Clinton.

The last ditch effort to block Trump is understandable, given the lack of fitness he displayed while campaigning for the presidency and his cavalier post-election treatment of everything from business conflicts of interest to intelligence reports of Russian hacking. Nevertheless, for the electors to upend the election results would have a number of destabilizing consequences.

For one thing, the dump-Trump effort is like a Hail Mary pass in football: extremely unlikely to succeed. To become president, a candidate needs at least 270 electoral votes; Trump ended up with 306 and Clinton with 232. There's no way that more than three dozen Republican electors are going to switch their votes to Clinton and put a Democrat in the White House.

And what if 37 Republican electors simply refuse to vote for Trump, cutting his total down to 269, one vote short of a majority? Under the Constitution, this would throw the election to the House of Representatives, where Republicans hold a majority and in all probability would elect Trump anyway.

Rep. Himes: Electors, dump Trump

In theory, the House could elect another Republican, a supposed "consensus candidate." If that happened, a mass revolt would undoubtedly ensue as the votes of nearly 63 million Trump supporters were tossed aside.

Yes, the Founders envisioned the Electoral College partly as a check on a pure democracy. The electors were seen as wise people — all of them property-owning white men back then — who could prevent the presidency from falling to a man not “endowed with the requisite qualifications.” But throughout American history, even in the rare cases where the winner of a majority of electoral votes has failed to capture the popular vote, the Electoral College has never taken it upon itself to change the course of the election.

Further, over the past two centuries, the Founders’ vision has given way to political change. Electors are loyal party regulars with no public recognition and no popular mandate but to rubber-stamp the outcome in their particular states. In 29 states, in fact, they are bound by law to vote for the candidate who wins their state. While these laws have never been tested in court and some legal scholars believe they wouldn’t hold up, rogue electors would likely throw the fate of the presidency into an extended period of uncertainly as a gaggle of lawsuits made their way through the system.

Fundamentally, America is not a place where you change the rules after the game is over. Both major-party candidates campaigned believing their goal was winning enough states to amass a majority of 270 electoral votes (each state has the same number of electoral votes as it has members of Congress). Voters cast their ballots in the belief that the election would be decided the way elections have been for decades. For faithless electors to upend the results this time would set a precedent for the next election and the one after that, contests in which the Election Day victor might be a controversial Democrat.

Since the election, as Clinton’s popular lead has risen to more than 2.8 million, a growing number of Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents favor abolishing the Electoral College. That's a separate issue that creates its own set of complications, and these opponents should work to amend the Constitution.

For now, the system is what it is.

USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature.

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