Republican
Donald Trump prevailed in U.S. Electoral College voting on Monday to
officially win election as the next president, easily dashing long-shot
hopes by a small movement of detractors to block him from gaining the
White House.
Trump
garnered more than the 270 electoral votes required to win, even as at
least half a dozen U.S. electors broke with tradition to vote against
their own state’s directives, the largest number of “faithless electors”
seen in more than a century.
A core of Democratic activists
around the country had hoped to convince Republicans to cross lines and
vote for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who won the nationwide
popular vote on Nov. 8.
In the end, however, more Democrats than
Republicans split with their party. Four Democratic electors voted for
someone other than Clinton, while two Republicans turned their backs on
Trump.
Bret Chiafalo, 38, of Everett, Washington, was one of three
electors from his state to vote for Colin Powell, a former Republican
secretary of state, rather than Clinton, saying he believed Powell was
better suited for the job than Trump.
The founding fathers “said
the electoral college was not to elect a demagogue, was not to elect
someone influenced by foreign powers, was not to elect someone who is
unfit for office. Trump fails on all three counts, unlike any candidate
we’ve ever seen in American history,” Chiafalo said in a interview.