Justices rule UNANIMOUSLY that states can force presidential electors to back their states’ popular vote
THE Supreme Court Justices has ruled that states can force presidential electors to back their states’ popular vote this week.
The unanimous ruling on Monday means states can require presidential electors to back their states popular vote winner in the Electoral College.
So-called faithless electors have not been critical to the outcome of a presidential election.
However, this could change in a race decided by just a few electoral votes: 270 electoral votes are needed to win the presidency.
Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the court that a state may instruct electors that they have no ground for reversing the vote of millions of its citizens before and 's November battle.
They hoped to persuade enough electors in states won by Trump to choose someone else and deny him the presidency.
Democratic electors who said they would not vote for Clinton were replaced in and .
The closest Electoral College margin in recent years was in 2000, when George W. Bush received 271 votes to Al Gore's 266.
The Supreme Court played a decisive role in that election by ending a recount in , where Bush held a 537-vote margin out of 6 million ballots cast.
The justices scheduled separate arguments in the and cases after Justice Sonia Sotomayor belatedly removed herself from the Colorado case because she knows one of the plaintiffs.
In asking the Supreme Court to rule that states can require electors to vote for the state winner, Colorado had urged the justices not to wait until the heat of a close presidential election.