[Image:  by Gage  /  Wikimedia Commons]

Meetings will be held in all 50 states to formalize election

62 electors have asked for briefing on Russian hacking

The Electoral College’s 538 members gather Monday at 50 state capitols to cast the ballots that matter the most when it comes to electing a U.S. president. Normally sedate affairs that pass with little notice, this year’s proceedings have been injected with a bit of drama and a dash of uncertainty with an unprecedented campaign by a small group of electors to overturn the results of Election Day.

A group calling itself the Hamilton Electors is attempting to deny Donald Trump the presidency by trying to convince Democratic and Republican peers to back someone else. While the effort is almost sure to fail, it injects still more rancor in what already has been a divisive political season and serves as a capstone for a 2016 presidential election that will go down as one of the oddest in U.S. history.

Bret Chiafalo, an Electoral College member from Washington state, is one of the organizers of the Hamilton Electors. The name is a nod to Alexander Hamilton and his explanation of the need for the Electoral College: to make sure that “the office of the president will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.”

“If only 37 Republican electors change their vote, Donald Trump will not have the 270 electoral votes he needs to be president,” Mr. Chiafalo says. “Thirty-seven patriots can save this country.”

Chiafalo and others who have joined the effort want the Electoral College returned to what they say is its original concept: a deliberative body that uses the popular vote as a guide.

Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard University law professor working with the stop-Trump effort, told reporters on a conference call Thursday afternoon that there are likely “at least” 20 Republican electors who are “seriously considering” defections.