Unbinding presidential electors could throw the 2020 election into chaos

[Elderberry]

SCOTUSblog by Paul Smith and Adav Noti 4/23/2020

Symposium: Unbinding presidential electors could throw the 2020 election into chaos

The timing could not be worse.

Less than six months before a hotly contested presidential election, the Supreme Court is poised to decide in Chiafalo v. Washington and Colorado Department of State v. Baca whether a state can require its presidential electors to vote for the presidential candidate who wins the state’s popular vote.

The court, as is its wont, might decide that question by parsing how the Framers anticipated the Electoral College would operate. But there would be immediate real-world consequences of “unbinding” presidential electors – consequences that could throw the 2020 presidential election into chaos.

By way of background: When a citizen voting in a presidential election marks a ballot for a candidate, the citizen is not actually voting for that candidate; rather, the citizen is voting for the candidate’s preferred slate of presidential electors — the people who will gather in their state capital about six weeks after Election Day and officially cast the state’s electoral votes for president.

For generation after generation, the Electoral College voting process has been a mere formality. In all 50 states and the District of Columbia, presidential electors have been viewed as merely effectuating the will of the jurisdiction’s voters, casting their ballots for the winner of their state or district’s presidential election.

If the Supreme Court unbinds the electors, this will no longer be the case. Presidential electors will go from being mere functionaries to being completely free agents, legally permitted to vote for any candidate (or no candidate), subject only to the electors’ own judgment. They will be free to choose as president any natural-born citizen of sufficient age, regardless of who won — or even ran in — their home state’s popular election. And that unreviewable judgment will decide who serves as president of the United States.

More: https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/04/symposium-unbinding-presidential-electors-could-throw-the-2020-election-into-chaos/

[Cyber Liberty]

Stamp out unfaithful Electors!  This comes up every 4 years, if a Republican wins a Presidential Election.  Nobody ever tries to "steal" faithless Electors when it's a Democrat who gets the Electoral College win, only when it's a Republican does the issue ever come up.

It's like recounts that always benefit the Rats, but never the Pubbies and that defies logic.