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Petition For Electors To Deny Donald Trump Presidency Picks Up Steam

WEST HOLLYWOOD (CBSLA.com)    —  An online petition calling for Donald Trump's electors to change their votes to Hillary Clinton is gaining momentum.

But could it work?

CBS2's Brittney Hopper spoke to a political expert who thinks the petition is giving Clinton supporters false hopes.

The petition on, on change.org, is being passed around by the hundreds of thousands on social media.

But what does it mean?

According the Constitution, each state's electors have until December 19 to officially cast their ballots.But the founding fathers also allowed them the chance to change their minds if they found the president-elect was unfit.

That has many Clinton supporters hoping that electors jump the Trump ship.

However, electors are picked by their political party. So it's doubtful they would change their minds.

Jessica Levinson, a political professor at Loyola Law School, says don't hold your breath.

"Because we [are going to] have a Republican in the White House, a Republican senate and a Republican congress there will be absolutely no political will to do away with this," she said.

The electoral college vote has been the system in which America votes and elects our president since 1789.

Leveinson says typically these petitions happen every time a candidate wins the popular vote but loses the electoral vote.

In this case, Clinton won the popular vote. And Trump won the electoral vote. This is the fifth time in our nation's history that this has happened. Most recent case the Gore and Bush election in 2000.

"Bush versus Gore was a presidential election that was arguably decided by one vote on the Supreme Court and we had a big discussion right after about changing the way we vote and very little happened. And I, unfortunately, think the same thing is true in this case," she said.

Hopper notes this petition already has close to two million signatures.

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