It does not say the Legislature can delegate the manner of the selection of the Electors to the citizens of other states.
I am not a Constitutional Scholar, nor do I pretend to be the President. Just a reader and observer. As my first post in this thread mentions above, the good liberals of CA would have been frothing at the mouth to wake up Wednesday morning after the 2004 election to find their state had elected George Bush's Electors, based on the results of the hicks in flyover country.
mvymvy is an Obamaton seminar poster. Think Ellie Light.
There is nothing in the Constitution that requires states to allow their citizens to vote for president, much less award all their electoral votes based upon the vote of their citizens.
Remember, in 1789, in the nation’s first election, the people had no vote for President in most states, only men who owned a substantial amount of property could vote, and only three states used the state-by-state winner-take-all method to award electoral votes.
The current 48 state-by-state winner-take-all method (i.e., awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in a particular state) is not entitled to any special deference based on history or the historical meaning of the words in the U.S. Constitution. It is not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, the debates of the Constitutional Convention, or the Federalist Papers. The actions taken by the Founding Fathers make it clear that they never gave their imprimatur to the winner-take-all method.
The constitutional wording does not encourage, discourage, require, or prohibit the use of any particular method for awarding the state’s electoral votes.
As a result of changes in state laws enacted since 1789, the people have the right to vote for presidential electors in 100% of the states, there are no property requirements for voting in any state, and the state-by-state winner-take-all method is used by 48 of the 50 states. States can, and frequently have, changed their method of awarding electoral votes over the years.
In Bush v. Gore in 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court wrote:
“The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the Electoral College. U.S. Const., Art. II, §1.
“This is the source for the statement in McPherson v. Blacker … that the State legislature’s power to select the manner for appointing electors is plenary.
Far from denying or abridging “the right to vote in presidential elections for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States,” the National Popular Vote compact actually establishes the people’s right to vote for President in compacting states. Article II of the compact states.
“Each member state shall conduct a statewide popular election for President and Vice President of the United States.”