A Republican elector representing Texas will not cast a vote for Donald Trump, writing in a New York Times op-ed published on Monday that Trump does not have the experience or demeanor needed to be president.
“Mr. Trump goes out of his way to attack the cast of ‘Saturday Night Live’ for bias. He tweets day and night, but waited two days to offer sympathy to the Ohio State community after an attack there. He does not encourage civil discourse, but chooses to stoke fear and create outrage,” Christopher Suprun wrote in his op-ed. “This is unacceptable.”
Suprun wrote that the Electoral College was designed to “determine if candidates are qualified, not engaged in demagogy, and independent from foreign influence.”
“Mr. Trump shows us again and again that he does not meet these standards. Given his own public statements, it isn’t clear how the Electoral College can ignore these issues, and so it should reject him,” he said.
Suprun urged his fellow electors to reject Trump and come to an agreement on a suitable Republican to replace him, such as Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
“The election of the next president is not yet a done deal. Electors of conscience can still do the right thing for the good of the country. Presidential electors have the legal right and a constitutional duty to vote their conscience,” he wrote. “I pray my fellow electors will do their job and join with me in discovering who that person should be.”
Suprun is not the first Republican elector to reject Trump. Art Sisneros, another Republican elector in Texas, resigned from the Electoral College last month because he refused to vote for Trump.
