1. The faithless-elector decision is, its legal merits aside, a healthy development for the fall elections. States can, of course, allow faithless electors, but long tradition has taught Americans & their candidates to assume that the winner of a state's vote gets its electors.
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2. Legally, the decision is...debatable, but an ordinary reading of the plain language of Article II & the Court's prior precedents all pointed in the direction of giving the state legislatures control over the electors.
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3. Notable that the Court - yet again - does not cite Bush v Gore, but its treatment of the faithless elector laws is consistent with the broad reading of Article II legislative power that was the basis for the conservatives' concurrence in Bush v Gore.
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4. The electoral college has, frankly, departed from its original design, but its value as presently practiced comes from its two centuries of tradition in choosing the American head of state - the oldest continuously elected head of state on earth.
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5. And some of the reasons why the electoral college still works are part of its original design - they're just not completely coextensive.
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6. One state - South Carolina - had electors directly appointed by the state legislature all the way to the Civil War. Which would cause a national uproar today, but is consistent with broad legislative control.
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7. (Of course, that is not to say that South Carolina in 1860 did not cause a national uproar, but that's a different thing)
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Replying to @baseballcrank
Related, maybe the strongest case for reforming the EC isn't faithless electors or even the popular vote it's that it's totally legal for another state to go the SC route (more likely divide by district a la NE/ME) and cause said hypothetical national uproar
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Replying to @BenjySarlin
As with many things, we could improve the current system but we could never pass any improvements into law bc there would be holdout demands to instead blow the whole thing up, go national popular vote.
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Replying to @baseballcrank
There's no obvious alternative , which is also why it just comes back to that same debate over and over again. But if I had to name something that actually ends up blowing up the system, it wouldn't be more EC/pop vote splits, it would be that.
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This year's election being decided - or thrown to the House - by a faithless elector would be a pretty apocalyptic scenario.
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Replying to @baseballcrank
I agree, I just think it's really unlikely compared to the other doomsday scenarios
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Replying to @BenjySarlin @baseballcrank
Also there is something hilarious about "System working as Founders intended causes apocalyptic crisis"
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