Dear Republican Electors,

 

Congratulations on being appointed by your state Republican organization. I’m sure most of you are pleased that President-Elect Trump won. However by now you have probably been approached by the anti-Trump fanatics trying to convince enough of his 306 electoral votes to vote for someone else. While they realize they have almost no chance of anyone other than Trump being inaugurated as President what they are trying to do is to discredit him. This follows attempts at recounts in PA, MI and WI which resulted in Trump gaining 131 votes. Most outrageously are their attempts to try and prove Russia influenced the election in favor of Trump. If anything it proves President Obama’s administration has a totally inadequate cyber defense.

 

There are 15 states which do not bind their electoral voters to vote for the candidate who won the popular vote for that state. All of the 15 states except Virginia voted for Trump resulting in 160 of his 306 electoral votes and 270 are needed to win. However if you are from one of those states you were appointed with the expectation and probably made a commitment that you would vote for Trump.

 

There are also efforts on the balance of the electors who are bound to vote for Trump. If you are a bound elector but vote for someone else you would be called a “faithless” elector with maximum penalties of fines and/or jail time.

 

If you are thinking about voting for someone other than Trump on Monday 12/19/16  I hope you will VERY seriously think about the commitment you made and the facts below.

 

I was an elected Republican member of the Georgia House of Representatives for 12 years and voted on several thousand legislative bills. Some of those which passed the House and Senate and were signed into law by the Governor resulted in the “law of unintended consequences.” Fortunately we were generally able to come back in the next legislative session and correct the problem. If you don’t vote for Trump your passion/ideology/ego were most likely your primary motives so you will probably experience a serious case of regret. However unlike legislators you will have no such chance to correct your vote.

 

Over the past 8 years we have doubled our debt to almost $20T, race relations are the worst in decades, 23 percent more are in poverty, there have been unfavorable trade balances of about $800M per year, Obamacare is a growing failure, poor border protection has allowed millions to illegally enter our country competing for jobs and getting billions in government services and the killing of police officers is up 78 percent this year!

 

The foregoing just deals with some of our worsening domestic problems over the past 8 years. I don’t have space to elaborate on equally deplorable international problems over the past 8 years. Let it suffice to mention the emergence of ISIS, “line in the sand” Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Benghazi/Lebanon, Iran Nuclear Deal, TPP and the “Russian reset.”

 

My point in listing some of our problems above is that a new president will either improve them or make them worse. Therefore if you are thinking about not voting for Trump who will make these problems better? Please do not mention Clinton because she was a part of many of the foregoing, her platform would continue much of what we’ve had for 8 years and a Republican House would never vote for her. So is it Kasich who has already said he would not accept such votes? Perhaps it is Romney or Cruz. Regardless none of them have been vetted like Trump, done any of  the work Trump is doing to get ready to be president and most of the 62,914,474 of us who voted for Trump would be infuriated!

 

You could be like some of our “never Trump” Republicans in Congress who didn’t think Trump was conservative enough or did not like something he has said or didn’t like some of his past. Fortunately most of the “never Trump” in Congress realized that what is at stake is far more important than their particular bias and are now on board. I encourage you to do likewise otherwise I believe you will be aiding and abetting the radical Democrats who as I said above are really only out to discredit Trump and negatively affect his presidency.

 

Two additional cautions: Democrats do a much better job of uniting than Republicans so if this ever gets to the House floor the 188 Democrats would only need about 30 of the 247 Republicans in the right states to control who the new president would be! Second read the Constitution to see who could become Vice President!

 

In my last article published Nov. 21 I said “many of us should be optimistic of a Trump presidency” and listed his past accomplishments as key reasons. It’s only been five weeks since Trump’s election and  given what he has already done with his cabinet appointments, working with companies like Ford and Carrier to keep jobs here, the pledge from a leading Japanese industrialist to invest $50B here to create 50,000 jobs because Trump was elected, his meetings with some black leaders to work toward better race relations and to improve the wretched conditions millions experience in many inner cities, calling out cost overruns and world leaders already pledging support give me even more assurance of a successful presidency. In summary I wholeheartedly encourage you to vote for President-Elect Donald J. Trump Monday at your state capitol!

 

Jeff Brown is a former Georgia state representative from LaGrange.