Members of the U.S. Electoral College have begun voting in their respective states to make the definitive decision in the Presidential Election.
Electors in the mid-west U.S. states of Indiana and Illinois are among the first of the 538 total electors scheduled to cast ballots Monday.
Voting will continue in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia throughout the day.
The Electoral College vote is usually little more than a formality, but the spotlight is on the body this year because of appeals for electors to vote against president-elect Donald Trump.
Trump is nevertheless expected to win a majority in the Electoral College and seal his victory in the November 8 election.
Trump won 306 Electoral College votes in the election, a clear majority even though he lost the nationwide popular vote to Hillary Clinton.
Electors have been flooded with emails and telephone calls pressuring them not to vote for Trump, according to media reports.
In addition, nearly five million people have signed an online petition on the website change.org aimed at preventing Trump from becoming president.
“We are calling on ‘conscientious electors’ to protect the Constitution from Donald Trump, and to support the national popular vote winner’’, the petition reads.
“If my many supporters acted and threatened people like those who lost the election are doing, they would be scorned and called terrible names’’, Trump said on Twitter.
There have been no signs of a revolt large enough to reverse the election outcome.
Even if some electors vote against him, Trump’s 306 Electoral College votes top Clinton’s 232 and provide him with a sufficient cushion to reach the required 270 majority.
Michael Moore, a director of documentary films on US society and politics, also joined the calls for electors to turn against Trump.
He offered financial incentive to any rogue electors by announcing on Facebook he would pay their fines.
More than half the states have laws that require electors to vote a certain way and impose fines if they break the rule.
According to U.S. law, the Electoral College is required to cast their votes on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, or about six weeks of the election.
The result is to be reported to Congress on January 6 and officially announced.
The new president will be sworn in on January 20.
Electors typically are party leaders or individuals with a connection to the candidate in the 50 US states and the District of Columbia.
They are chosen by their state political parties.
The system was written into the Constitution at the country’s inception as a compromise between politicians who wanted Congress to choose the president and those who wanted voters to choose the country’s leader.
The politicians in favour of it believed it would safeguard Americans from the election of demagogues and tyrannical rulers.
In more recent times it has been described as a vestige of another era. (dpa/NAN)