This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Utah's electors are getting more pressure from groups still trying to scuttle the election of Donald Trump, but the intense lobbying seems to be having little effect on the virtually inevitable outcome of the race.
On Wednesday, the group Democracy and Progress ran a full-page ad in The Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret News, as well as in The Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Austin American-Statesman and Tampa Bay Times, urging electors to ditch Trump and cast their votes for someone else when they meet Monday.
The open letter spells out a series of reasons they should abandon Trump — from threats to various faiths to his cozy ties with Russia and a "reckless disregard for diplomacy" — and argues that "you, Electors, possess the power to prevent this outcome."
"State law notwithstanding, you are free to vote your conscience," the letter reads. "You have a mandate, like all officials, to protect and defend the Constitution. And you have a right and responsibility to investigate those who stand for this office, and to deliberate before casting your vote."
Under Utah law and the law in numerous other states, electors who choose to vote for someone other than the winner of the popular vote in that state are deemed "faithless electors" and replaced with an alternate.
Even if that were not the case, Utah's electors have, thus far, shown no appetite to make waves.
Cherilyn Bacon Eagar, one of Utah's six electors, said that the full-page ads prove that the groups lobbying the electors are well funded and "most likely, because it's what I'm finding, coming from people who are funders of the Democratic Party or members of the Democratic Party and voters for Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders."
"The population in Utah had an opportunity to review and scrutinize all these complaints [in the ad] throughout the election process and, in the end, Donald Trump was the popular-vote winner in Utah," she said. "I see no edict from the people of Utah … to abandon the person who was elected in Utah."
Eagar said that Trump beat out 16 competitors for the Republican nomination and she believes he was a better choice than Clinton and — despite some reservations about the Cabinet picks he has announced thus far — she believes he will do a good job as president.
Other Utah electors had previously said they were being bombarded with emails and letters from people urging them not to vote for Trump, but they have refused to buck the voters. Those electors — picked by the GOP in convention — include Salt Lake County Councilman Richard Snelgrove; Chia-Chi Teng, who unsuccessfully challenged Rep. Jason Chaffetz for the Republican nomination; Peter Greathouse; Jeremy Jenkins; and Kris Kimball.
Harvard University professor Lawrence Lessig told Politico on Tuesday that he knows of 20 Republican electors who are considering not voting for Trump, although only one elector from Texas has publicly said he would not vote for the GOP president-elect.
Trump won 306 electoral votes to Clinton's 232, meaning the anti-Trump forces need to get 37 electors to refuse to vote for Trump in order to deny him the presidency and send the election to Congress to decide.
Utahns generally want to keep the Electoral College — the system of deciding the winner of the White House by who captures a majority of the electors chosen in each state — rather than going to a system in which the winner is decided by who receives the most votes nationwide, according to a new poll.
The poll, conducted by Dan Jones & Associates for UtahPolicy.com, found that 60 percent of Utahns support keeping the Electoral College and 37 percent want to get rid of it. The survey of 614 registered Utah voters had a margin of error of plus of minus 3.95 percentage points.
Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, is once again sponsoring a resolution in the Utah Legislature this year calling for the abolition of the Electoral College.
Trump will become the fifth person to gain the White House by winning the Electoral College while losing the popular vote. Clinton beat Trump by more than 2.5 million votes nationwide.
Twitter: @RobertGehrke