Kansas Electoral College may be met by protesters Monday

The Senate chamber of the Kansas Statehouse is pictured July 23, 2014 in Topeka.

? The six members of Kansas’ Electoral College may be met by protesters Monday when they gather at the Statehouse in Topeka to cast the state’s electoral votes for Republican Donald Trump.

One group calling itself the December 19 Coalition said it is organizing protests in all 50 state capitals Monday.

“The Electors have both the Constitutional right and the moral responsibility to stop Trump,” said Daniel Brezenoff, founder of a group called the Electoral College Petition, which is part of the coalition, in a news release. “He lost the popular vote and he should lose on December 19 at the Electoral College.”

But as of Friday it was unclear whether that coalition had actually recruited anyone in Kansas to lead such a protest here, and organizers did not respond to multiple requests for more information.

Another group calling itself the Hamilton Electors has also been actively lobbying state electors in an effort to sway their votes away from Trump. The group’s name plays on the popularity of the Broadway musical “Hamilton,” based on the life of Alexander Hamilton who wrote in the Federalist Papers that the Electoral College should act as a safeguard to prevent unqualified people from becoming president.

But Kelly Arnold, Kansas Republican Party chairman and one of the state’s six electors, said there is virtually no chance that any Kansas electors will change their votes.

“I represent the state of Kansas and here, we voted overwhelmingly to elect Donald Trump and I will hold to what the people of Kansas asked me to do,” Arnold said.

Many of the groups protesting Trump’s electoral win argue that Democrat Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by more than 2.8 million ballots.

But Trump won in enough states to amass an electoral college victory, 306-232, a margin of 74 votes. That means at least 37 Republican electors would have to change their votes to send the election to the House of Representatives, and it would take 38 vote switches to give the election to Clinton.

Arnold said he has been inundated with phone calls and emails from people, almost all from out of state, urging him to change his vote. Besides the discrepancy between the popular and electoral votes, he said people have cited a laundry list of other reasons such as the alleged Russian hacking of Democratic Party emails and Trump’s business holdings, which many people argue present conflicts of interests.

“I would agree 100 percent that if some foreign government has hacked into the systems, we need to investigate that,” Arnold said. “Law enforcement are, and the Senate is going to investigate.

“It turns into, ‘We can’t accept losing and we want you to change your vote for many different reasons,'” he said.

Besides Arnold, the Kansas Electoral College will consist of Kansas GOP executive director Clay Barker; state party vice-chair Ashley J. McMillan; national committeewoman Helen Van Etten; national committeeman Mark Kahrs; and State Treasurer Ron Estes.

The Electoral College meeting will get underway at noon Monday in the Senate chamber of the Statehouse in Topeka. In the event that inclement weather prevents some from showing up, Arnold said the rules allow the remaining members to immediately elect replacements.

Under a statute that hasn’t been changed since 1923, electors are paid $3 for their service, plus 15 cents per mile for travel expenses.