ATLANTA — People upset over President-Elect Donald Trump's win are trying to stop him from becoming president. They're working to convince members of the Electoral College to vote for Clinton instead.
In about six weeks, all 16 of Georgia’s Republican Electoral College members will gather at the secretary of state's office inside the Capitol to cast ballots for president.
Tradition tells us they'll all vote for Donald Trump, but a growing number of cyber-protesters are trying to talk as many as they can out of it.
"This is the way to me that reasonable minds, adults in the room, express dissent," Channel 2 political analyst Bill Crane told Channel 2 investigative reporter Aaron Diamant.
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A Change.Org petition is hoping to convince Republican Electoral College members to ditch Donald Trump and cast ballots for Hillary Clinton, who won Tuesday’s national popular vote.
"A president coming in with a significant amount of dissent, this demonstrates to him or her there's some outreach to be done,” Crane said.
Flying across social media Friday, at last count, the petition had over 3 million digital signatures.
"Are those real legitimate addresses, is that Mickey Mouse who signed it? We don't know with an online petition how much of that is real or Twitter generated, what have you," Crane told Diamant.
For it to work, the petitioners would have to flip nearly 50 Republican electors to get Clinton to that magic number of 270.
Even though Georgia is one of 21 states that allows its electors to go against the state's popular vote, Crane warns that changing those votes is highly unlikely.
"There's not much chance of 50 or more electors, given that they typically are among the party's most loyal members and donors, former RNC and DNC members, that they'll make that switch," Crane said.
In August, Georgia Republican elector Baoky Vu resigned rather than face the prospect of casting a ballot for Trump.
"I fear that the nominee of the top of the ticket, I think doesn't want to win the presidency," Vu told Channel 2 Action News.
While the petitioners' goal might be a wildly long shot, Crane said, "In the political arena, you could make the argument that the Tea Party essentially started that way in opposition to the Affordable Care Act and grew from a bunch of people up in Cobb County, which is where it was actually started, being angry, into a national movement."
In our country's 240-year history, only 157 Electoral College members have ever bucked their party, and nearly half of them did it when the candidate they pledged to vote for died.
The Electoral College votes on Dec.19.
Cox Media Group
