Majority Wants Monday's Electoral College Vote Postponed In Wake Of Russia Scandal: New Poll

Electors will gather across the country on Monday to choose the next president.
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WASHINGTON ― A majority of American voters favor delaying the Electoral College vote scheduled for Monday until electors can be fully briefed on Russian interference in the election, according to a new poll conducted by YouGov.

The survey, sponsored by the progressive advocacy group Avaaz, found 52 percent of people supportive of stalling the vote.

A surprisingly high number of people ― 46 percent ― were also willing to support so-called “faithless electors,” the name given to members of the Electoral College who spurn the vote of their home state and vote for a different candidate instead.

President-elect Donald Trump’s opponents have been pressuring electors to break with their state’s voters, and a law firm has even offered pro bono, confidential legal advice to any elector curious about his or her options. Avaaz has collected thousands of signatures on a petition calling for the vote to be delayed.

Trump won a fairly wide Electoral College victory on Election Day, but Hillary Clinton is on pace to beat him in the popular vote by some 3 million. In a sign of how divided the country is, however, more than 1 in 4 Republicans believe that Trump in fact bested Clinton in the popular vote. That belief may stem from a false claim Trump himself made on Twitter, when he said that he would have won the popular vote had millions of people not voted illegally. That came after a separate claim from Trump, in which he said he could have won the popular vote if he had wanted to, by campaigning in highly populated states like California and New York.

Some states mandate that electors vote the way their state instructs, but the 10th Circuit Court ruled late on Friday that electors who vote their conscience rather than their state’s preference cannot be removed as electors. The court covers the region of Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas, Utah and Wyoming.

Only one elector has publicly said he will be breaking from Trump.

Get reporter Ryan Grim’s newsletter, Bad News, in your inbox. A coalition of public interest groups has sponsored a campaign calling for the Electoral College to be ended. You can join that by signing below.

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