There are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The first stage, denial, took place on election night when all of the news outlets pretended that what was clearly about to happen wasn’t about to happen, along with the hashtag that Donald Trump is “Not My President” (except he kind of is). Then there was the mass protests and vandalism, with the occasional vindictive hate crime hoax mixed in. That was the anger phase. After the riots died down, Jill Stein started to make the news with her vote recount stunt that didn’t work, followed by the current attempt to sway the Electoral College to vote against Trump. So we’re currently in the bargaining phase. We’re almost there everyone!
The latest attempt to stop Trump from getting elected involves swaying the Electoral College. Electors in most states are allowed to vote against the outcome on election night, and in the states where they are not, there are only minor penalties in place. There have only been a handful of occasions where electors have voted independently of the election outcome. So far in this election, one elector has already publicly announced that he won’t be voting for Trump. Several have been bombarded with emails and letters trying to persuade them to do the same.
Trump has 306 electoral votes, and the point of victory is 270, meaning that 38 of Trump’s electors would have to switch votes in order to cost him the presidency. All things considered, this is an extremely unlikely outcome. However, the Electoral College vote is usually an afterthought, a political formality, that no one even thinks about and that many people likely aren’t even aware of. The fact that we’re talking about flipping the Electoral College is indicative of how many people are in denial about this election. It is time to accept reality. Donald Trump is going to be the next President of the United States.