Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner heads to Albany Monday, one of 29 New York state electors who have pledged to vote for Hillary Clinton, when the Electoral College meets to validate the November presidential election. And the vote is taking place under the shadow of potential Russian influence on the election.
Miner and several other mostly Democratic electors demanded an intelligence briefing regarding potential Russian meddling in the November presidential election.
Miner says she’s doing this as a patriot, not necessarily because her candidate, Hillary Clinton, lost the electoral college vote.
"I’ve been in elections before where candidates I've supported lost, and where candidates I've support won. I have never been involved in an election, that I know of, where there's been an allegation of a foreign power interfering or trying to sway an election. Now, whether or not they were successful in doing that, is secondary to the primary question of did that happen, and if so how we as Americans should react to that,” said the mayor.
Miner says when she initially signed on to the letter asking for the briefing, it was unclear if there would be any kind of Congressional investigation into Russia’s potential involvement into the election. She says she’s happy to see since then that top congressional leaders have agreed that a bipartisan probe is needed to find out what exactly happened.
Miner says this potential tampering with elections is the kind of news that can undermine the bedrock of democracy.