Colorado Secretary of State, Jena Griswold, supports the Supreme Court's willingness to take up the case, stating:
"Unelected and unaccountable presidential electors should not be allowed to decide the presidential election without regard to voters' choices and state law."
Colorado's 10th Circuit ruled states are free to choose their electors, even requiring them to pledge their loyalty to their respective parties. Once electors are chosen and report in December to cast their votes, however, they are performing a federal function, thereby ending the state's authority, adding:
"The states' power to appoint electors does not include the power to remove them or nullify their votes."
According to the voting advocacy group FairVote:
"Congress has accepted the vote of every vote contrary to a pledge or expectation in the nation's history that has been transmitted to ita total of more than 150 votes across twenty different elections from 1796 to 2016."
Harvard University law professor Lawrence Lessig explained:
"There is no mechanism for state officials to monitor, control, or dictate electoral votes. Instead, the right to vote in the Constitution and federal law is personal to the electors, and it is supervised by the electors themselves."
Article II of the Constitution stipulates "each state shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress."
The 12th Amendment explains further:
"The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President"But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice."
There is no language requiring electors to adhere to their political parties' wishes in lock-step.
Dr. Lessig added:
"The structure of the Constitution, as interpreted by this Court over our 230-year history, prohibits the states from interfering with the exercise of this plainly federal function."
Equal Citizen's Jason Harrow said:
"With this petition, we are asking the Supreme Court to resolve a critical question that has gone strangely unanswered for two centuries: Who are presidential electors, and can state officials force them to vote for certain presidential candidates?"
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