But that is by custom, and it is not required by the Constitution.
In fact, a State Legislature would be completely within its rights to appoint Electors by flipping a coin instead of allowing idiots to vote for them.
It is not by “custom” FRiend— it is specific in the Constitution, and delegates to the states the process of delegates to the Electors.
Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution requires each state legislature to determine how electors for the state are to be chosen, but it disqualifies any person holding a federal office, either elected or appointed, from being an elector. And, under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment,and specific to that time- any person who swore an oath to support the United States Constitution in order to hold either a state or federal office, and who later rebelled against the United States directly or by giving assistance to those doing so, is disqualified from being an elector. However, the Congress may remove this disqualification by a two-thirds vote in each House.
Basically, since the Civil War, all states have chosen presidential electors by popular vote— the “District Plan” that both Madison and Hamilton wanted an Amendment made to provide the process. The Civil War gave impetus to States to do so:
. This process has been normalized to the point the names of the electors appear on the ballot in only eight states: Rhode Island, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arizona, Idaho, Oklahoma, North Dakota and South Dakota.
Since 1996, all but two states have followed the winner takes all method of allocating electors by which every person named on the slate for the ticket winning the statewide popular vote are named as presidential electors. Maine and Nebraska. From there the process gets quite specific and cross-checked. Faithless electors may be (and are) discarded, and because this dilutes a State’s power they are rare, indeed— the real political pressure keeps them in line, or— removes them. We saw this in Trump I.
Each state’s electors must complete six Certificates of Vote. Each Certificate of Vote must be signed by all of the electors and a Certificate of Ascertainment must be attached to each of the Certificates of Vote. Each Certificate of Vote must include the names of those who received an electoral vote for either the office of president or of vice president. The electors certify the Certificates of Vote and copies of the Certificates are then sent in:
One is sent by registered mail to the President of the Senate (who usually is the incumbent Vice President of the United States);
Two are sent by registered mail to the Archivist of the United States;
Two are sent to the state’s Secretary of State; and
One is sent to the chief judge of the United States district court where those electors met.
A staff member of the President of the Senate collects the Certificates of Vote as they arrive and prepares them for the joint session of the Congress. The Certificates are arranged – unopened – in alphabetical order and placed in two special mahogany boxes. Alabama through Missouri (including the District of Columbia) are placed in one box and Montana through Wyoming are placed in the other box. Before 1950, the Secretary of State’s office oversaw the certifications, but since then the Office of Federal Register in the Archivist’s office reviews them to make sure the documents sent to the archive and Congress match and that all formalities have been followed, sometimes requiring states to correct the documents.
It is the screaming, losing MOB that is the democrat party that wants NO electoral college. The prevention of such Factions is precisely the reason for the Electoral College. To prevent what disasters happened in pre-Revolution Europe, we escaped from.