Michael Baca, a Democratic elector from Colorado, is planning on filing a a lawsuit to unbind his electoral vote from Hillary Clinton. His lawyer, who isn’t naming him or herself publicly until the lawsuit is filed, told Politico that he expects similar lawsuits in several of the 29 states that have laws binding electors to the state’s popular vote.
The idea behind the lawsuits, is, essentially, that a court victory would tell electors in those 29 states that they would face no legal repercussions for voting for someone other than the state’s official winner (i.e. President Elect Donald Trump). The anonymous lawyer argues that the Constitution prevents electors from having to “cast votes against their will” as Politico paraphrased it.
Several Democratic electors are working to protest the system and lobby their Republican counterparts to do the same. The hope is that even if Trump still becomes the President of the United States in the end, the Electoral College system will be “disrupted” enough to force a major overhaul.
Another Democratic elector, Polly Baca (no relation) told Politico earlier this week that the Electoral College must go back to its roots in the Federalist Papers or else it’s rendered pointless. “If we cannot use the Electoral College as a deliberative process … then we ought to do away with it,” she said.
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