Supreme Court Rules States Can Remove 'Faithless Electors'
Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
We ran the numbers: There are 629 news articles covering this topic. 45% (282) are left leaning, 42% (262) center, 14% (85) right leaning.
On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that states can prohibit Electoral college representatives from breaking their pledge to vote for a state’s popular vote winner in presidential elections. While left-leaning articles highlight that the ruling was not surprising, right-leaning articles highlight that the ruling doesn’t mandate that states have to require their electors to vote for the popular winner.
CNN published a left-leaning article highlighting that CNN Supreme Court analyst Steve Vladeck said that the ruling was “not surprising” due to the “potential implications of a holding that electors could vote for anyone they chose.” Washington state Attorney General Robert Ferguson also told justices that since the Electoral College was created, there have only been 165 faithless electors, which is less than 1% of the total number of Electoral College votes cast for president.
A centrist article by The Hill highlights a handful of electors cast their votes in 2016 for people who didn’t win their states’ popular votes in an attempt to deny President Donald Trump an Electoral College majority. Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig said he was disappointed by the decision, stating that it eliminated uncertainty around the nation’s process for choosing a president.
A right-leaning article by Fox News highlights that the Monday ruling doesn’t completely eliminate the possibility that there could be faithless electors in the future, because the court ruled that states have the option of requiring their electors to vote for the popular winner, not that it is mandatory. Members of both parties feared that without this voting, a close election in 2020 could result in a handful of electors moving to sway the result.