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Richard Snelgrove never received so much national attention, and it's because of his normally under-the-radar job this year as one of Utah's six official voters in the Electoral College.

The Salt Lake County Council member and onetime GOP candidate for Congress says he's been deluged with pleas from people across the country urging him not to vote for Donald Trump when the Electoral College meets Dec. 19 — even though he's committed by Utah law to do so.

"I estimate I've had 2,500 to 3,000 emails. I've had maybe 30 to 40 personal letters. I've also received a few phone calls," he said. "Most are respectful and well-reasoned. But a few have been over the top."

Cherilyn Eagar, another of Utah's official voters and also a former congressional candidate, said she's received dozens of requests — relatively few because, she added, a website urging such pleas "made an error with my email address."

Kris Kimball, another Utah elector, said her email was listed correctly on the same website, so she has been receiving a couple of hundred emails a day lately — probably a total of 1,200 and counting.

Despite the flood of requests, Utah's official voters appear to be holding firm with plans to vote for Trump — even though several say the Republican presidential nominee was not their first choice. They say legally they have no choice, even though such powerful people as Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, disagree.

Rules • Utah law requires all of its electoral votes to go to the winner of the state's popular vote. Utah is allotted one vote for each member of Congress that it has, or six total, out of 538 nationally. Electors are chosen by the winner's political party, elected by delegates at its state convention.

Electors nationwide gather at noon local time Dec. 19 in their respective state capitals to cast the only votes that truly count in the presidential race. In Utah, they will meet in Room 445 in the state Capitol that day.

Utah Code 20A-13-304 says electors must cast their votes for their party's winning nominee "except in the cases of death or felony conviction of the candidate."

If they try to vote for someone else, the law says the elector "is considered to have resigned from the office of elector, his vote may not be recorded, and the remaining electors shall appoint another person to fill the vacancy."

The FairVote.org website says Utah is among 29 states that legally bind electors, seeking to prevent "faithless electors" from supporting someone besides their state's popular-vote victor.

Loophole? • Among those who question the constitutionality of faithless electors laws is Lee, an attorney. "The constitutionality of [faithless-elector laws] has not really been upheld or challenged or tested in court. Basically, electors have some discretion," he said in a Cato Institute interview in October.

Lee said he believes electors "are honor bound to do what's right. I don't think they ought to depart from what they are expected to do for light and transient reasons, but I think one of the reasons why our Founding Fathers put in place the Electoral College was to put an additional layer of protection there in case something really bad was going to happen."

Lee, a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, is considered enough of a legal scholar by Trump that he was on the list of people he would consider nominating to the U.S. Supreme Court. But the Utah senator may have closed that door by criticizing the celebrity billionaire during the campaign and disclosing the day after the election that he voted for independent candidate Evan McMullin.

Eagar disagrees with Lee's analysis. "It's clearly a binding position" under Utah law, she said. "We don't have faithless electors here."

Still, two electors nationally — Michael Baca of Colorado and Bret Chiafalo of Washington — have been trying to persuade other electors not to support Trump.

They call themselves "Hamilton electors," noting that Alexander Hamilton wrote that the Electoral College was meant to ensure that "the office of president will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications."

Some attorney groups, and the websites HamiltonDefenders.com and HamiltonElectors.com, have volunteered to defend any elector who seeks to vote for someone other than the popular-vote winner in their state, and they have offered to sue on their behalf to try to free them from any apparently binding state laws.

They also have set up methods for potential faithless electors to communicate privately to strategize.

Also, a Change.org petition urging electors to ignore their state votes and cast ballots for Democrat Hillary Clinton has attracted 4.7 million signatures nationally, which organizers assert is the most ever by a Change.org petititon.

Faithless electors • The FairVote website says that, through the years, 157 faithless electors cast ballots for someone other than the popular-vote winner in their state. Some 71 of those votes occurred because the original candidate died before the Electoral College voted. (Democratic presidential nominee Horace Greeley died in 1872 after the general election but before electors cast ballots. In 1912, Republican incumbent Vice President and candidate James Sherman died just before the general election but remained on the ballot.)

The other several dozen instances of faithless electors did not change the outcome, and only a handful of such votes have come in recent elections.

The most recent came in 2004 when an unknown elector from Minnesota cast a presidential vote for John Kerry's running mate, John Edwards. In 2000, Barbara Lett-Simmons abstained with her vote for Washington, D.C., in protest of the district's lack of full-fledged congressional representation.

The closest that faithless electors came to altering an election was in 1836 when the Democratic Party nominated Richard M. Johnson for vice president. The 23 electors from Virginia refused to support him amid allegations that he had lived with an African-American woman.

With those 23 votes missing, no vice presidential candidate obtained a majority in the Electoral College. The decision was kicked to the Senate — which elected Johnson anyway.

Pressure, plans • Snelgrove has been an elector twice before — previously casting official Utah votes for John McCain and George Herbert Walker Bush. "I had a few requests then to vote for someone else, but nothing like this year."

Peter Greathouse, another of Utah's electors this year, said a majority of the emails he has received "ask me to vote for Hillary Clinton because she won the popular vote" nationally. He said some ask him to vote for anyone but Trump. A few ask him to abstain, which could help prevent the 270-vote majority Trump needs to win.

Greathouse acknowledged he "wasn't thrilled with Mr. Trump." But, like all the other Utah electors, he was selected for the role before Trump was nominated. "I signed up knowing what the job was, so I feel it is my duty to abide by the will of the voters of the state."

Snelgrove also says he was less-than-thrilled with Trump and became a national delegate to try to help Texas Sen. Ted Cruz defeat him.

"But my role is not to overrule the will of the people," he said. "My role is to reflect the will of the people. Trump won in Utah."

Similarly, Kimball said she also was a Cruz supporter initially. But she is happy that Trump won mainly "because I'm thrilled that Hillary Clinton lost."

Eagar was an early Trump supporter. "I don't think he's going to be the horrible, terrible, very bad president that some of the more extreme right-wing folk think. And that may be surprising coming from me," said the staunch conservative.

Elector Jeremy Jenkins said, "I am not only bound by state law, but am an enthusiastic supporter of Donald Trump." He also said all but one letter urging him to vote for someone else came from out of state. "I don't pay attention to them because this is a Utah issue."

Utah's other elector, Chia-Chi Teng (who ran unsuccessfully this year against Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah) did not reply to messages seeking comment.

Defending the system • The four electors who were interviewed all defend the Electoral College system, even though it can — and did this year — give the victory to a candidate who lost the popular vote nationally. Clinton led by 2.5 million votes at last count.

The Electoral College "helps protect smaller states," Eagar said, noting it gives them more votes per resident by design so that larger states cannot dictate to smaller ones.

"Without it," Kimball added, "candidates would just focus on the big metropolitan areas."

But state Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, disagrees and plans to introduce a bill this year that would have Utah join a compact of states that pledge to give its electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote nationally.

Stephenson said that would mean every vote counts equally, so candidates would need to campaign everywhere — which he argued would bring more attention to Utah.

Snelgrove said he knows from previous experience that he and his fellow electors will have a nice reward for their sometimes high-pressure role this year: They will be invited to the presidential inauguration.

Sometimes that can be more fun than at other times. It was a bit melancholy for Snelgrove when he attended the 2008 inauguration of President Barack Obama after casting his losing vote for John McCain. "But you get prime seats. It's nice." —

Utah's six members of the 2016 Electoral College

• Cherilyn Eagar

• Kris Kimball

• Jeremy Jenkins

• Peter Greathouse

• Chia-Chi Teng

• Richard Snelgrove

Note: They were elected by the Utah Republican Party Convention.