When Does The Electoral College Vote 2016? Clinton's Last Chance Win, Beat Trump, Comes Monday

It didn’t take long after last month’s presidential election for millions of Americans to cycle through several stages of grief before landing on the third, bargaining, and basically just sit on that level. As election results rushed and then trickled in showing Democrat Hillary Clinton had won the popular vote by a historic margin while still losing the Electoral College to a candidate who had never held elected office and who appeared somewhat disinterested in the reality of governing, people wondered if there was another way.

Detractors in the end coalesced around a long-shot strategy to deny Donald Trump the presidency: Convincing Electoral College voters to be unfaithful to the candidate their states had chosen. After more than a month of speculation about the feasibility of that strategy — several electors have indicated they may refuse to support Trump — the moment of truth will come Monday when ballots are finally cast.

Pundits have more or less decided a last-minute Clinton Electoral College victory is highly unlikely. While the college was set up at least in part to insure against a populist movement that could undermine the country, electors regularly cast their ballots for whoever won their states. Only a handful of electors have indicated they are planning on trying to deny Trump a victory next week and it would take 37 electors from states Trump won to either abstain or vote for another candidate for the Election Day results to be denied.

But electors also don’t appear to be comfortable with the election either. A bipartisan group of electors came together recently to request that they be briefed on evidence related to the alleged Russian hacking and meddling in the election. Clinton’s campaign, for its part, has supported that effort to help electors become informed on whether or not Russia tipped the electoral scales in favor of her opponent.