The Supreme Court on Monday upheld state laws requiring Electoral College electors to endorse the popular winner in their state’s presidential race, a reprimand from a group of so-called “infidel” presidential voters in Washington and Colorado who filed a lawsuit after being sanctioned. for voting against the promises they made before becoming voters.
In a 9-0 ruling, the court said those penalties, a fine in Washington and in Colorado that are removed and replaced as a voter, are constitutional.
The cases come after a group of Democratic voters who called themselves “Hamilton Electors” voted for moderate Republicans instead of Hillary Clinton in 2016, in a failed effort to convince Republican voters to vote for someone other than President Trump. .
Electoral College (LR) Voters Senator Polly Baca, Michael Baca and Ann Knollman speak before taking the oath in the Governor’s office at the Denver State Capitol, USA, December 19, 2016. REUTERS / Rick Wilking
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“Among the devices that states have long used to achieve their goal are compromise laws, designed to impress voters on their role as agents of others,” judge Elena Kagan wrote in the court’s opinion. “That leadership is in accordance with the Constitution, as well as with the confidence of a nation that here, we, the people govern.”
Although many voters don’t realize it, when Americans cast their vote in the presidential election, they actually vote for the “electors” who then cast the official votes that decide the presidential election. They almost always sealed the popular vote winner in their state, but sometimes they voted for a different candidate, as the Hamilton Voters did in 2016.
“Ultimately, it is about reflecting the will of the voters who participated in the elections,” Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman said in an interview with Fox News in an interview before oral arguments in the case. “And it is the state’s determination to ensure that those voters are represented in the Electoral College, and it is a right of the state and it is a function of the state.”
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Monday’s ruling does not entirely prohibit the possibility that there may be unfaithful voters in the future: the court ruled that states may require their constituents to vote for the popular winner, not that they must.
The case for which Kagan wrote the opinion is called Chiafalo v. Washington State. In that case, the judges upheld the ruling of the Washington Supreme Court. In an unsigned opinion, citing the reasoning for Chiafalo’s opinion, the judges separately reversed the decision of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals that states could not enforce electoral promises, in a case called the State Department of Colorado vs. Baca.
Kagan added: “The text of the Constitution and the history of the Nation support allowing a State to enforce an elector’s promise to support his party’s candidate, and the election of state voters, for President.”
Kagan cited the power of appointment in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, which he said “gives states powerful authority over presidential voters, without any other constitutional restrictions.” Such a restriction, Kagan wrote, does not exist in the Constitution.
“The Constitution is basic to voters,” he said. “Article II includes only instructions for each State to designate, in the manner it wishes, as many voters as there are Senators and Representatives.”
Justice Elena Kagan joined the Supreme Court in 2010 after being nominated by former President Barack Obama.
(Reuters / Jonathan Ernst)
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Voters’ attorneys argued that the name of their office – “elector” – and the fact that the Constitution says they “vote” for “vote” implicitly means that voters must have discretion once they are seated, and that a The state cannot sanction them for voting against their promises, such as how a state cannot sanction a US senator for violating a campaign promise. Kagan and a unanimous supreme court disagreed.
“Suppose a person always votes the way their spouse, pastor or union tells them to,” Kagan wrote. He also cited other voting scenarios, such as “proxy voting” or elections where there is only one option: “[C]consider an old Soviet election, or even a negative electoral race in this country. “
“However, if the person in the voting booth goes through the motions, we consider that they voted,” he wrote.
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Members of both parties feared that if the Supreme Court did not issue a ruling on the issue of unfaithful voters, a closed election in 2020 could see only a handful of voters move to influence the outcome.
“To imagine that the problem will be resolved in the midst of a real election, and forcing the Supreme Court to decide the issue where its decision would be to elect a president, it would be Bush v. Gore on steroids,” Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig , who argued the Hamilton Electors case before the Supreme Court, told Fox News.
Michale Baca of Colorado and Bret Chiafalo of Washington were two leaders of the Hamilton Electors movement. Both were delegates to Bernie Sanders in 2016 and told Fox News that after being elected as Democratic voters they decided to vote for moderate Republicans instead of Hillary Clinton, not as a reprimand for Clinton, but as an act of good faith to try to convince republican voters. avoid Trump.
They failed in their effort to stop Trump, but Chiafalo told Fox News that he doesn’t regret his 2016 vote for Colin Powell.
“I still had to go and defend what I had said to all those Republican voters on the phone,” he said.
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The vote was counted but was later fined by Washington state.
Baca was removed as a voter and replaced by someone who would vote for Clinton when he crossed out his name and voted for John Kasich.
“The state stepped in and eliminated me as a voter,” said Baca. “When they took me out, that’s when the capitol exploded. There were chants and cheers … I knew I had to keep my conscience.”
Fox News’ Bill Mears contributed to this report.
