Supreme Court: states can bind electors' votes

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday, July 6 that states can require presidential electors to back their states' popular vote winner in the Electoral College.

The ruling, which affirmed a case from Washington state and reversed the decision in a case from Colorado, comes just under four months before the 2020 election.

It leaves in place laws in 32 states and the District of Columbia that bind electors to vote for the popular-vote winner, as electors almost always do anyway.

So-called faithless electors have not been critical to the outcome of a presidential election, but that could change in a race decided by just a few electoral votes. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

Steve Mulroy, a Law Professor at the University of Memphis, said both major political parties wanted this outcome because it empowers states to prevent electors from reversing their votes, which did occur 10 times during the 2016 election.

"There are 15 states that have outlawed faithless electors. After today's decision, you might see more states doing that," Mulroy said.

Mark Sherman, a Supreme Court reporter for the Associated Press, said lawyers on both sides of the case are glad the Supreme Court acted now instead of issuing a decision closer to the November 2020 election.

"In other words, before a potential political or constitutional crisis, in the event, that the election outcome is so close and the outcome in the Electoral College, it turns on the votes of a couple of people," Sherman said.

The closest Electoral College margin in recent years was in 2000 when Republican George W. Bush received 271 votes to 266 for Democrat Al Gore. One elector from Washington, D.C., left her ballot blank.

The Supreme Court played a decisive role in that election, ending a recount in Florida, where Bush held a 537-vote margin out of 6 million ballots cast.

Monday's ruling was not about the legitimacy of the Electoral College or an ongoing effort to effectively eliminate it by having states commit to supporting the national popular vote winner. That proposal, sure to be challenged in the courts, wouldn't take effect unless states constituting a majority of electoral votes endorsed it.

Mulroy believes there is still a lot of momentum from the public to reform the Electoral College, including the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact which many states have already signed on to.

"The faithless elector has never really been the big issue with the Electoral College because, as you've said, it's only been a few here or there. Never enough to change the outcome," Mulroy said. "I think we'll see more efforts at Electoral College reform, which will then be challenged in the courts in the years to come."