This year was different. Some 200 protesters jammed the Statehouse meeting room hoping to make this pro forma ritual anything but. Across the country, protesters hoped a revolt by electors in each state would keep president-elect Donald Trump from taking office.
“One person, one vote,” they chanted, protesting the concept of the electoral college. “Dump Trump,” some of the signs read.
As Tim Jerman, one of the three electors, waited for the official ceremony to begin, protester Bob Dana of Belvidere urged him on. “Do your duty,” Dana said.
But just what was Jerman’s “duty?” Opinion varied.
“There’s at least five iterations of what people want,” said Jerman, a state representative from Essex Junction who is also vice chair of the Vermont Democratic Party.
Jerman and the state’s two other electors — Gov. Peter Shumlin and Martha Allen, president of the Vermont-NEA teachers’ union — saw it as their duty to cast votes for Democrat Hillary Clinton because she received the most votes in Vermont on Election Day.
At a meeting that took just 12 minutes, they became the first electors in the country to report their result.
Allen agreed. “I understood when I became an elector I was expected to do that,” she said.
And Shumlin: “Electors around the county have a duty to uphold the law.”
But the electors got plenty of other advice. Some people wanted them to vote for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) because — well — he almost won the Democratic presidential nomination. Or for any Republican who’s “more qualified” than the actual president-elect.
That’s what Dana wanted. “The right thing to do at this juncture is to acknowledge we lost the election,” the self-described liberal said. But he could not come to grips with the idea of a President Trump. “He’s not qualified,” Dana said, noting the president-elect’s lack of public service and his refusal to reveal his financial interests.
Jerman and Allen agreed. Trump’s not qualified to be president, they said. “He doesn’t have the temperament,” Jerman said.
But he did say he considers Trump to be the most troubling presidential choice he’s ever seen. “No question, this is the first president-elect that has truly made me, and I suspect a lot of Vermonters, really uncomfortable about where our country’s going,” he said.
The Vermont Democratic Party chose the electors and a new batch is selected every presidential election. This year’s trio agreed that the electoral college, the constitutionally created mechanism by which presidential candidates are elected, doesn’t work well.
Though Trump won 306 electoral college votes in the November 8 election, it was Clinton who won the popular vote by nearly three million votes.
“The person who gets the most votes should win,” Shumlin said.
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Shumlin’s comments in this article just certify that he is not a very smart. The Electoral College does not work? If it were not for the EC no national political campaign would ever come to Vermont there are not enough people here. So as Vermonter you should be thankful you get to use the EC to have our collective voices heard. Now I understand that Trump is the winner of the election and it is hard for a lot of you to stomach but you cant blame the system. It just so happens that in this election you lost. But last election none of you had a problem with the system when your guy won right. Now folks you can all sleep well knowing that your three electors did the right thing by not voting for the evil Trump just remember when you wake up that Clinton still lost. Thank God Pete and Hillary are out of our lives. God bless America and God Bless President Trump.
I didnt realize that you could change the U.S. Constitution via protest! I didnt realize that a handful of disappointed people gathered at the Vermont statehouse could abolish the Electoral College! I thought that there was a constitutional process for amending the constitution!
HIllary won the state she gets the electors. I don’t understand the protest. The only protest I can see is one that says Hillary won the primary through fraud and other bush tactics but the time for that protest is over.
sadly, everyone has forgotten that there are more than two people that exist. There are more people in the USA than Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. Electors vote for whomever they want.
“One Person, One Vote” is a nifty little slogan but I believe Hillary and the Democrats knew how how the Electoral College worked before the election. Maybe she should have spent a little more time in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin instead of assuming those states were hers.
Tom A I’m not sure you understand how the EC works. Electors in most states are bound to vote for the person that won the popular vote in there state or district, so they really don’t have a choice unless they want to pay a $500 fine. In some states if an elector goes against the popular vote they are replaced by an alternate. Such as the elector in Maine that tried to vote for Bernie.
“One Person, One Vote” is a nifty little slogan but I believe Hillary and the Democrats knew how how the Electoral College worked before the election. Maybe she should have spent a little more time in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin instead of assuming those states were hers.”
Your comment is difficult to understand, to the extent that it relates to this article. Please go back and re-read the headline of this article. Hillary is not orchestrating this Montpelier protest against Trump and has nothing to do with it. As the headline points out, the three Vermont electors are casting their votes FOR Hillary and have done so. The protestors in the Vermont statehouse were not protesting on behalf of Hillary. Their protest may have been misguided, but it was not a protest on behalf of Hillary. Please, get a clue. Thank you.
Knowyourassumption if not for Hillary than who? PLEASE inform us what they where protesting for or for who? Also please have all the protesters refer to my earlier post on how the Electoral College works.
Why would Vermont want to give up the more equal representation that the Electoral College affords it and allow New York and California to determine who the President will be every Election? I don’ think these people know what they are even protesting against other than an outcome they didn;t like.
knowyourassumptions, the “One Person, One Vote” chant was not exclusive to Vermont, and I hate to burst your bubble but I am fully aware the protest was not organized by Clinton. You seem to have missed my point, which was all these people were protesting the outcome because a candidate with the most popular votes didn’t win the election.
All of the candidates knew the process before one vote was cast in November, and that process was about winning the majority of the electoral votes. It’s a little late to be crying about the process AFTER the fact. I would suggest it is you who needs to get a clue.
Hofsterini, you might or might not be right about why the anti-Electoral College protesters in other states are protesting. But the article you commented on is about the VERMONT protesters, and they clearly are not protesting on behalf of Clinton. Your post said nothing about other states. Try to keep your complaints straight.
@citizen claims that “If it were not for the EC no national political campaign would ever come to Vermont there are not enough people here.”
Of course that ignores the reality that no campaigns bother with Vermont in the general election under our current system. (I believe the last time a major party nominee campaigned in Vermont after the conventions was in 1992, when Bill Clinton came to Burlington.)
The issue isn’t the size of the state — it is that we are viewed as safely blue and, like approximately 35 safely Republican or Democratic states around the country, the parties don’t need to bother to try to win our electoral vote. That’s true of states of all sizes, CA, NY, TX, TN, WA, LA, WY, KS, MO, KY, ND, SD, MA, MD, DE, DC, RI, and numerous other states are ignored for the general election campaign. In the meantime, a couple of handful of states get all the attention — FL, OH, NC, PA, MI, WI, IA, CO, NH, VA all see far more of the candidates that the rest of the country combined.
A small state like New Hampshire or Iowa gets plenty of attention — because they are seen as legitimately up for grabs.
The issue in deciding whether a national campaign comes to a state isn’t the number of people — it whether the election in the state is seen as politically close or not.
I sure hope that after this election all parties see that no states are sure bets and Vermonter don’t forget that for the first 200 years of this countries history Vermont was,as red as they come. That is one of the many mistakes Hillary made in the campaign, she thought there was no way here blue wall would Crack. Well guess what it not only cracked it crumbled.
Just because Bernie Sanders didn’t run in the general election, doesn’t keep me from putting him in the Hall of Fame of spoilers with Ralph Nader and Jill Stein.
Bernie – The little engine that could, was the little engine that can’t, and will bring Hillary down with him.
Isn’t recent evidence showing election fraud (more votes than voters, for example) that benefits Hillary?
Some of us are tired of the tantrums that the left is throwing because they lost the election. It happens.
Fortunately our forefathers were much smarter than most people today and set up the Electoral College. At that time the population of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia was far greater than the population in the other states. The Electoral college allowed for a balance between less populous states and the 3 population centers. This is exactly what this election showed; the population centers on the east and west coasts were at odds with the entire blue collar middle of the country and the number of states in the middle were able to voice their opinions and desires over the population centers.
Unfortunately the group that lost cannot accept that fact and are trying to get their way. This is indicative of more of how the divide is deepening. There used to be a tradition, esp in VT where different political groups got together and compromised- which meant both sides made concessions and a deal was struck. Now there is no compromise concept- the idea of compromise is now that the other side gives up their position or everyone wants a super majority so there is no healthy check or balance. People need to get over this and move on.
I’ll bet that at least some of these 200 people who decided to take time off from work and travel to Montpelier in the middle of a workday to protest didn’t bother to vote on election day.
Seems to me these crybabies liberals need to pull up their diapers, go back to school, work or back to their parents basement..Trump won, get over it, We didn’t cry and protest when obama won twice with fraud voting, it was proven, that dead people voted, people voted more then once..as much as you liberals don’t want to hear it Clinton didn’t win the popular vote..illegals voted in CA, the states that Clinton and Stein had recounts done, proved that TRUMP came out on top, they also found 100’s of votes from people who were dead..believe it or not but it’s fact..I spoke to some people who didn’t even vote..but yet they bitch and protest, one person has never voted..but yet he complains all the time..
Journalist Mark Halperin said it well on MSNBC’s Morning Joe the other day. Instead of focusing on rebuilding the Democratic Party and how to appeal to the working class, the lead editorial in the NY Times was pushing to abolish the electoral college. It’s nonsense.
Both candidates knew the rules going in and for whatever inexplicable reason, Hillary Clinton chose not to set foot in Wisconsin even once during the general election! She lost the Michigan primary to Bernie Sanders and then, in spite of this warning, still ignored later requests from local operatives for more campaigning & assistance in Michigan.
We are not going to ditch the Electoral College and focusing on doing so takes away from the hard work of self reflection and critical analysis required on the part of the Democrats.