Aboriginal activists thought his electoral college vote might be fake news

he U.S. electoral college vote — which confirmed a Trump presidency — was exceptional. There were a record number of faithless electors who did not vote according to the results in their state, and this included a presidential vote for a Native Ameri

Faith Spotted Eagle, 68, is a prominent activist who opposes both the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. On Monday she became the first Native American to receive a vote for president. Of course, she was not running for president. She was busy driving her daughter to an airport when she received the news from a reporter. Spotted Eagle said: “I thought it was fake news ... I told my daughter, ‘Is this real?’ She said, ‘I think it is.’”

Washington State elector Democrat Robert Satiacum decided he would vote for Spotted Eagle at the very last minute. Satiacum is a Native American radio host and a member of the Puyallup Tribe in Washington State. Satiacum is a die-hard Sanders supporter. There was no way he would vote for Clinton At one point he even called her a criminal who did not care enough about American Indians and claimed "she's done nothing but flip back and forth".

Satiacum said that he was disillusioned after the Philadelphia Democratic National Convention: “It became apparent that this is a huge distraction, this election. It doesn’t matter who ascends to the throne. It’s the Olympics — a football game. It’s a distraction for the elite… How did we get Bozo the Clown and Mickey Mouse to choose from for president?” Satiacum said that he was ready to write a B for Bernard Sanders. However he heard a fellow aboriginal elector Dan Carpita playing a ceremonial song on a flute, he remembered Spotted Eagle whom he had hosted on his radio show several times over the past decade. He had also met her recently at Dakota Access protests. Satiacum also cast a vote for Winona LaDuke, a Native American environmentalist for vice-president.

Spotted Eagle was not the only person who suspected the vote was fake news. KOMO-TV in Seattle tweeted her name in quotes suggesting the name was fake. The station later apologized. Matthew Yglesias, well-known co-founder of Vox tweeted: “As Federalist 37 argues, once you’ve already lost the election you may as well vote for someone with a funny/memorable name.” Many on social media were not amused. Spotted Eagle's son suggested that in the world of mainstream journalism, she probably was regarded as imaginary.

Spotted Eagle was herself pro-Sanders and ambivalent towards Clinton although she appreciated Clinton's initiative addressing sexual abuse in the military. She thought that Trump's administration was going to be very pro-oil and that all of America would face a battle for the next four years. However she said it was nothing new for Native Americans or for her: “The battle that we’re fighting is 500 years old. It’s about dispossession, it’s about occupying our land by a foreign country, or foreign individuals.The resistance has always been in my blood and my spirit since I was born.”

There were three other faithless electors in Washington State all of whom voted for retired general Colin Powell. They hoped that they could convince Republican electors to vote for him as he is a Republican and would serve as an agreeable compromise to Trump. No other electors joined them. Of the two Republican faithless electors both from Texas, one voted for Ohio governor Kasich and the other for former representative Ron Paul a Libertarian. The other Democratic faithless elector from Hawaii voted for Bernie Sanders.

More faithless US college of elctors members vote against Clinton than Trump

In the U.S. system the President and Vice-President are not directly elected according to whether they receive the most votes but are elected by 535 members of the electoral college who are supposed to vote according to the results in each state.

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Each state is assigned a certain number of electoral college members. The electors are expected to vote in line with the results in the state elections. In the 2016 election Donald Trump won 306 electors and Hillary Clinton 232. Trump needed just 270 votes to win and he easily achieved that. However, he did not receive 306 votes when the electors actually voted but just 304 and Hillary Clinton lost even more votes receiving just 227.

While expected to vote in line with state results electors can vote for anyone they want except in states that have laws forcing them to vote according to the results. In the 2016 election there turned out to be seven "faithless electors", five pledged to vote for Clinton and two for trump. This is the largest number of faithless electors since back in the 1800's. In the last century there has never been more than one in each election. The seven faithless electors were from just three states:2016: four of the seven "faithless" (or "rogue") Electors were in Washington State (which had gone for Mrs. Clinton in the General Election this past 8 November); one (who voted for Senator Sanders) was in Hawaii (which had also gone for Mrs. Clinton); and the remaining two were in Texas (a State which had gone for Mr. Trump in the November Election).

Critics of president-elect Trump had been holding out hope for weeks that his election could be stopped through having enough of those pledged to vote for him under the system turn into faithless electors. There was never even any mention of the fact that electors might not vote for Clinton either. In fact, faithless electors are often those of the candidate who lost the electoral vote. A faithless elector can at least rationalize that the vote will not likely effect the outcome. Not only did Clinton suffer more defections than Trump, she could have suffered even more:One otherwise Hillary Clinton Elector in Colorado attempted to vote for John Kasich and was replaced by an alternate who, instead, voted for Mrs. Clinton; another otherwise Clinton Elector in Maine attempted to vote for Bernie Sanders, but was ruled Out of Order and, instead, thereafter voted for Mrs. Clinton; and yet another Clinton Elector in Minnesota also attempted to vote for Senator Sanders but, as a result, was also replaced by another person who voted for Mrs. Clinton.

Politico claims that the previous record number of faithless electors was in 1808 when six electors opposed James Madison. However, this does not count defections in voting for vice-presidential candidates nor elections with special circumstances. In 1872, 63 Democratic electors did not vote for candidate Horace Greeley since he had died. In 1832 32 electors were faithless but only two with respect to the president.

Of the four votes against Clinton in Washington State, three were for retired general Colin Powell, a Republican. They had hoped to convince Republican electors to follow suit and vote for Powell as a compromise candidate. It never happened. The other elector Robert Satiacum voted for Native American activist Faith Spotted Eagle. The final vote against Clinton was for Bernie Sanders and came from Hawaii. Both faithless electors against Trump came from Texas, with Chris Suprun voting for Ohio Governor John Kasich as was expected. Another elector voted for former Representative Ron Paul a libertarian which was unexpected.

Trump claims he actually won the popular vote

On Sunday Donald Trump claimed in a tweet that he actually won the popular vote if the illegal votes for Clinton were subtracted from her total vote.

One Trump tweet said: "In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally." Trump later added another tweet that said: "Serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California - so why isn't the media reporting on this? Serious bias - big problem!"

Rick Hasen, a professor specializing in election law at the University of California Irvine claimed: “There’s no reason to believe this is true. The level of fraud in U.S. elections is quite low. The problem of non-citizen voting is quite small — like we’re talking claims in the dozens, we’re not talking voting in the millions, or the thousands, or even the hundreds.” David Becker, of the Center for Election Innovation and Research agreed that widespread fraud was unlikely: "We know historically that this almost never happens.You’re more likely to get eaten by a shark that simultaneously gets hit by lightning than to find a non-citizen voting.”

The Trump claim appears to have arisen from an article in Infowars published on Nov. 14 that claimed in a headline that three million votes in the presidential election were cast by illegal immigrants. The article is analyzed in detail by Politifact. The evidence comes from two tweets by Gregg Philipps but Politifact observes that when Phillips was asked for more information: "He said he has chosen not to release more information because he is still working on analyzing the data and verifying its accuracy. Phillips would also not say what the data is or where it came from, or what methodology he used. Phillips said he would release the information publicly once he is finally finished." There is no report from VoteFraud.org which the Infowars article refers to for evidence. Nevertheless the article has been accessed tens of thousands of times and reprinted on various other websites. The two tweets were:" Gregg Phillips @JumpVote We have verified more than three million votes cast by non-citizens. We are joining .@TrueTheVote to initiate legal action. #unrigged 10:47 AM - 13 Nov 2016 9,106 9,106 Retweets 8,671 8,671 likes" and "Completed analysis of database of 180 million voter registrations. Number of non-citizen votes exceeds 3 million. Consulting legal team. 5:23 PM - 11 Nov 2016

2,869 2,869 Retweets 2,548 2,548 likesPhillip's page on Linkedin claims he is a former finance director of the Alabama Republican Party. He also was managing director of a super PAC that worked for Newt Gingrich's 2012 campaign for president.

Trump also cited a 2014 blog post in the Washington Post which used figures from a disputed study that estimated 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens in 2010. However, election experts dispute the finding with one analyst saying that the finding is entirely due to measurement error.

The Trump outbursts may be related to claims that having lost the overall popular vote, Trump does not have a mandate to govern. Trump has also been critical of the audit of voting in three states in which Trump had relatively narrow wins over Clinton. A senior Obama administration official has claimed that the election results "accurately reflect the will of the American people"

Princeton historian Julian Zelizer said: "In this case, we see the victor making blanket accusation of fraud to delegitimize 2.5 million votes. Given there is no evidence to support the claim, this is simply stunning and troubling as a sign as to what he will do as president."

In reaction to Trump, Paul Krugman, the Nobel prize-winning liberal economist joins the conspiracy crowd tweeting: "So Comey and Putin installed a crazy, vindictive can't-handle-the-truth person in the White House. Scary." I append an Alex Jones Infowars video on the issue.