U.S. Supreme Court justices concerned about ‘chaos’ in Electoral College dispute

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The cases involve so-called faithless electors who did not vote for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Electoral College even though she won the popular vote in their states

Colorado and Washington state are among the 48 states – only Maine and Nebraska excepted – with winner-takes-all systems awarding all electors to the candidate who wins the state’s popular vote.

In the early stages of the arguments, justices probed the discrepancy between electors taking an oath to pledge their vote to the winner of the popular vote in their states and the arguments made by their lawyers that they cannot be punished for refusing to uphold their promise.“It’s somewhat hard to understand the concept of something I am pledged – bound – to do. I have made a promise to do something. But that promise is unenforceable,” liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said.

Lessig said that it would be acceptable, noting that the states can impose a moral obligation but not a legally enforceable one. But in 2016, 10 of the 538 electors voted for someone else. While that number of so-called faithless electors did not change the election’s outcome, it would have in five of the 58 previous U.S. presidential elections.State officials have said faithless electors threaten the integrity of American democracy by subverting the will of the electorate and opening the door to corruption.

 

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What a dam'' awful mess the US Electoral College system is. Someone can pledge to obey state rules, then vote the opposite, and that's OK And the US believes it's a democratic country? Wow.

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