Hamilton Electors determined to make sure "world's worst cyberattack doesn't hit its mark"

The rogue electors who are taking one last shot at stopping Trump are pointing to the Russian hacks

By Matthew Rozsa

Staff Writer

Published December 12, 2016 3:46PM (EST)

Donald Trump; Alexander Hamilton   (Getty/Jeff Kowalsky/Wikimedia/Salon)
Donald Trump; Alexander Hamilton (Getty/Jeff Kowalsky/Wikimedia/Salon)

The group of rogue electors known as the Hamilton Electors who are engaged in a last-ditch effort to stop Donald Trump from becoming president issued a press statement Sunday denouncing Russia's alleged hacking of the Democratic National Committee.

"On Friday we learned from a CIA report that a foreign nation interfered in the 2016 United States election," Michael Baca, a Democratic elector from Colorado, said in a statement. "We do not know all the details that led our nation's intelligence community to come to this conclusion, but as an elector, what I have heard has made me even more determined to insure the world's worst cyberattack doesn't hit its mark."

Baca was joined by Christopher Suprun, a Republican elector from Texas who came out in support of the Hamilton Electors' agenda last week in an op-ed for The New York Times.

"2016 will go down as one of the most successful cyberattacks in US history unless electors do our job and reject Donald Trump at the electoral college," Baca added.

In order for the Hamilton Electors to deny Donald Trump the presidency, they must at the very least convince 37 of the 306 Republican electors currently pledged to Trump to instead support a moderate Republican alternative. Democratic electors have taken the lead in this long-shot effort, which if successful at denying any candidate 270 electoral votes would throw the presidential election into the House of Representatives.

Baca told Salon that his goal last week that his goal is to rally 270 electoral votes behind whichever moderate Republican alternative the Hamilton Electors unify around, which would allow them to bypass the House of Representatives and have that candidate elected to the presidency directly.

Baca had said that there was the greatest amount of support for John Kasich, even though the Ohio governor's office tweeted on Tuesday that he does not want the Hamilton Electors voting for him. Baca would not provide specifics about whether the Hamilton Electors are close to achieving either of these goals — that is, either denying Trump enough electoral votes to throw the election into the House of Representatives or coalescing enough support behind Kasich to elect him directly.

Kasich's senior communications adviser Chris Schrimpf told Salon "there's been no change" in Kasich's position.


By Matthew Rozsa

Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer at Salon. He received a Master's Degree in History from Rutgers-Newark in 2012 and was awarded a science journalism fellowship from the Metcalf Institute in 2022.

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Donald Trump Hamilton Electors John Kasich Vladimir Putin