Here’s the problem. The PA legislature is entirely a creation of the PA constitution. Any power the legislature has is granted to it by the state constitution and that constitution absolutely limits those powers, as it does for the Executive.
So this idea that the COTUS gives the state legislatures extra-(state)constitutional law making powers is just wrong.
And states manage their own elections - even for federal offices. If that wasn’t the case none of these state level lawsuits would exist. Everything would be done according to federal election law.
The framers said every state can choose their electors however they want, and the state legislature, as the peoples’ representative, is the right body to do it. But it obviously has to be done by enacting legislation and the rules for doing that are determined by the state constitution.
If not, what determines the form and enforceability of those laws?
The states were sovereign governments before the ratification of the Constitution. Their own founding documents established their baseline powers after the Declaration of Independence. They first attempted to unify under the Articles of Confederation.
By ratifying the Constitution of the United States, the several states delegated powers to the federal government. One of those powers was the plenary power of the state legislature to choose the method of selecting Electors to the Electoral College. By ratifying the Constitution, the state agreed to the stipulation that the legislature had sole power to set the process for selecting Electors.
Pennsylvania, and other Democrat governed states, are now reneging on that stipulation.
-PJ