CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - West Virginia’s five representatives to the electoral college voted Monday for Donald Trump to be the next U.S. president and Mike Pence for vice president.
All were chosen earlier this year by West Virginia’s Republican Party. They got the nod after their party’s candidate won a majority of the state’s popular vote.
They met in the West Virginia House of Delegates chamber in Charleston, where they filled out paper ballots and didn’t talk during the ceremony. Secretary of State Natalie Tennant counted them aloud to applause in the chamber.
Trump, the Republican, received 489,371 votes in November, 68.6 percent of the statewide total. Democrat Hillary Clinton got 188,794 votes in West Virginia, or 26.5 percent. The remaining 5 percent were split among three minor-party candidates.
The electors were Senate President Bill Cole, a car dealer who lost his bid for governor to Democrat Jim Justice; Mac Warner, an attorney and GOP candidate elected West Virginia secretary of state; Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, re-elected last month to a second four-year term; Ron Foster, president of a building-supply company in Scott Depot; and Ann Urling, a Charleston banker who lost the race for state treasurer to incumbent John Perdue.
Five or six protesters stood outside the House chamber in the state Capitol with signs, said Briana Wilson, spokeswoman for the secretary of state. They didn’t disrupt any part of the process, she said.
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