Interesting discussion on this at Legal Insurrection.
This decision can be seen as throwing cold water on the proposed interstate popular vote compact, requiring participating states to throw their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. Both Kagan’s majority opinion (see footnote 4) and Thomas’ dissent (near the end) acknowledge that a state’s ability to control how their electors vote is constrained by other constitutional demands. So, as Kagan points out, the Art. II language nominally giving states the right to select electors in any manner they choose is still subject to the Equal Protection Clause. If so, then it’s hard to see how the compact could survive, where it deprives the voters (or legislators, etc.) of a given state of virtually ANY say in how that state’s electoral votes are cast.
I wish. It states MAY require Electors to vote for the candidates who won the popular vote in that state.
If the state doesn’t so require, the ruling has no bearing on Electors in that state.
The ruling can in fact be interpreted as allowing states to impose an alternate requirement, such as NPV.
The NPV people are claiming states have unfettered power under Art. II to decide how their states cast their electoral votes. Today’s decision point’s out that the cited power is NOT unfettered: i.e., states can’t exercise their power to dictate how electors are chosen in a way that is otherwise unconstitutional, such as a violation of equal protection. (For example, they couldn’t say that the electors could only vote for a woman.) The fact that states do not actually have carte blanche under Art. II over the selection of electors is really bad for the NPV, because it would be hard to argue that depriving the voters (directly, or through the legislature) of ANY meaningful say in the decision of which candidate receives that state’s EVs is not a deprivation of constitutional rights. The NPV literally disenfranchises entire state populations in terms of presidential elections; is that not a fairly obvious violation of the constitution? And even the dissent, which takes a 10th amendment approach to the faithless elector issue, seems to agree on this particular point.
On the contrary, this terrible decision makes that compact more likely to happen, precisely because it gives the state legislatures the right to direct its electors how to vote. There is no right of the people of a state to any say whatsoever over the election of a president. They have only such right as the state legislature chooses to give them. Since the state legislature can decide to give you no say at all, and to simply appoint the state’s electors, a fortiori it can decide to limit your say to one in 100 million. But before this decision it couldn’t enforce that decision; now it can.
....some comments, what do you think?
Country Music Hall of Fame member Charlie Daniels dies at 83
Dave Paulson Matthew Leimkuehler Nashville Tennessean
FTA
Charlie Daniels, a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame best known for “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” died Monday morning after suffering a hemorrhagic stroke. He was 83.
Daniels’ death was confirmed by his publicist, Don Murry Grubbs. He is survived by his wife, Hazel, and son Charlie Daniels, Jr.
This is a developing story.