ABC News(WASHINGTON) — Donald Trump has hit 270 Electoral College votes, meaning that he has the required number of votes to be elected president.
The milestone moment came when electors in Texas cast their votes.
Four of the electors in Washington state who were set to vote for Hillary Clinton have gone rogue and cast their Electoral College votes for other candidates.
Three of the electors voted for former Secretary of State Colin Powell and the fourth voted for Native American tribal leader Faith Spotted Eagle, according to the Washington secretary of state.
Unlike other faithless electors in Maine, Minnesota and Colorado, which each had an elector try to switch his or her vote away from Clinton, the four rogue electors in Washington were able to actually change their votes. That means that unless she receives votes that were originally slated to be for Trump, Clinton will not end up with the 232 Electoral College votes she was expected to receive following the Nov. 8 election.
The rogue electors in Washington have not yet had their names publicly released. Washington has a law that states that electors will be fined “up to $1,000” for switching their vote against the popular vote result.
The change in vote tallies comes as the country’s 538 electors met Monday to cast their votes in the last step of the presidential election. But what is usually a formality has taken on new significance this year with Trump’s election and calls for electors to defect.
In order to win the election, candidates need to reach 270 Electoral College votes. Trump reached that mark, garnering 306 electoral votes on Nov. 8 compared to Hillary Clinton’s 232 votes, although he trails her in the popular vote.
Over the past six weeks, left-leaning groups have called for electors to break rules that require them to vote in a way reflective of their states’ popular votes, a move that would make them “faithless electors.”
Electors are not bound by the Constitution or federal law to vote according to the popular vote of their state. Thirty states have laws that require electors to do, but those laws have not been scrutinized, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Activist Michael Moore had offered to pay the fines of those who choose to break with their states’ vote.
One of the biggest concerns among some electors was the role of Russian hackers ahead of the election, and the potential impact that the revelations from the stolen emails had.
All but one of the 80 electors who called for classified briefings on Russia’s suspected hacking were already pledged to Clinton.
The gap between the results of the popular vote and the Electoral College tally has also left some electors unhappy, with Clinton garnering some 2.8 million votes more than Trump.
Only one elector who is pledged to Trump -– Chris Suprun from Texas -– has said that he won’t be voting for Trump Monday. And one elector from Maine said he planned to vote for Bernie Sanders instead of Clinton.
Muhammad Abdurrahman, an elector in Minnesota, was replaced after making it clear that he would not be voting for Clinton even though she won the state. Such a move goes against state laws, the Minnesota secretary of state’s office confirmed.
One elector who likely voted for Clinton is her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who cast his vote in New York. Clinton won the state by a large margin.
The Electoral College vote won’t be formalized until Jan. 6, when Congress counts the ballots.
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