Pennsylvania Trump electors get police protection ahead of Electoral College vote

Pennsylvania electors assigned to vote for Donald Trump have been given police protection ahead of Monday's Electoral College vote.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazettereported on Sunday that plainclothes police officers had been assigned to all of state's 20 electors after a torrent of "nasty" emails and phone calls.

"I'm a big boy," elector Ash Khare told the paper. "But this is stupid. Nobody is standing up and telling these people, 'Enough, knock it off.'"

Elector Mary Barket said that her office had received a flood of emails, phone calls and letters expressing fear of a Trump presidency. She said that many people asked her to read Alexander Hamilton's The Federalist Papers No. 68, which asserts that electors have a duty to verify the qualifications of a president.

"I take my job as an elector very seriously, and in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump won," Barket insisted. "So any argument thereafter, especially about the nature of him being a president, is not going to have an effect on me."