Donald Trump is officially the president-elect after winning more than 270 Electoral College votes. Although there was a great deal of noise about “faithless electors” potentially casting their votes for other people, in the end, Trump only lost two electors. Hillary Clinton lost four.
The idea behind faithless electors was that they were free to vote for not-Trump, facing at most a $1,000 fine. They didn’t do that.
Faithless electors in Washington State did break from the Democrats: three voted for Colin Powell and one for Faith Spotted Eagle, a celebrated member of the Sioux nation who stood against both the Keystone XL Pipeline and the Dakota Access pipeline. Her name was the subject of all kinds of racist hilarity from reporters who didn’t have five seconds to Google her.
Meanwhile, just two Republican electors, both in Texas, voted against Trump: one cast his vote for Kasich and the other for Ron Paul. Hardly anybody, then, took up Michael Moore’s offer to defect and have him pay their fines:
One of the Texas electors, Chris Suprun, has been vocal about his plans to vote against Trump, and for his trouble was smeared by people claiming he’d lied about being part of a team of first responders on September 11 at the Pentagon. (C-Span got confirmation that he was a member in good standing of a volunteer fire department at the time that did respond to the scene later on the day of the attacks.)
To further drag this thing out, the House and Senate will meet on January 6 so that Vice President Joe Biden can count the votes and formally declare the winner. I bet he’s excited.