Supreme Court says presidential electors may be forced to support winner of popular vote

Thirty-two states have laws addressing 'faithless electors', though only 16 of those penalise or cancel such votes

States can make members of the presidential electoral college honour the results of the popular vote and cast their ballots for their pledged candidates, the US Supreme Court ruled on Monday.

The unanimous ruling allows states to eliminate the possibility of "faithless electors" going rogue and voting for candidates other than the ones who win their state's popular vote and whom they had previously agreed to support.

In the US, a state's popular vote determines which candidate's chosen electors in that state are sent to the electoral college to choose the president.

The vast majority of presidential candidates' pledged electors cast ballots for them during the electoral college vote, but there are often a handful of defectors.

In the 2016 election, for instance, two electors from Texas who had pledged to support Donald Trump ended up voting for former Congressman Ron Paul and then-Governor John Kasich of Ohio. And five Democratic electoral college voters defected from Hillary Clinton to vote for other people.

Mr Trump still won by a 304-227 margin in the electoral college vote, but the phenomenon of faithless voters always raises concerns among democratic experts about their potential impact on future elections with closer electoral margins.

Thirty-two states have laws addressing so-called faithless electors, but only half of those, 16, penalise or cancel the votes of defectors.

While all nine US Supreme Court justices ruled to uphold the constitutionality of state laws curbing electoral college defections, unanimity was not the standard in some lower courts.

“The Constitution provides the state only with the power to appoint, leaving the electors with the discretion to vote their conscience,” Washington State Supreme Court Justice Steven C Gonzalez wrote in a dissenting opinion in May 2019.

In the backdrop of the Supreme Court's decision on Monday are persistent ideological and legal questions about the democratic merits of the electoral college system.

Two of the past three US presidents — George W Bush and Donald Trump — won the presidency in the electoral college despite losing the nationwide popular vote.