Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/19-465_i425.pdf
Page Number: 7.0

4 

CHIAFALO v. WASHINGTON 

Opinion of the Court 

“The Electors shall meet in their respective states and 
vote  by  ballot  for  President  and  Vice-President  . . .; 
they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as 
President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for
as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of 
all  persons  voted  for  as  President,  and  of  all  persons
voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes 
for  each,  which  lists  they  shall  sign  and  certify,  and
transmit  sealed  to  [Congress,  where]  the  votes  shall
then be counted.” 

The Amendment thus brought the Electoral College’s vot-
ing  procedures  into  line  with  the  Nation’s  new  party  sys-
tem. 

Within a few decades, the party system also became the 
means of translating popular preferences within each State
into Electoral College ballots.  In the Nation’s earliest elec-
tions, state legislatures mostly picked the electors, with the
majority party sending a delegation of its choice to the Elec-
toral College.  By 1832, though, all States but one had in-
troduced  popular  presidential  elections.    See  Peirce  & 
Longley,  The  People’s  President,  at  45.  At  first,  citizens 
voted for a slate of electors put forward by a political party,
expecting that the winning slate would vote for its party’s
presidential  (and  vice  presidential)  nominee  in  the  Elec-
toral College.  By the early 20th century, citizens in most
States voted for the presidential candidate himself; ballots 
increasingly  did  not  even  list  the  electors.    See  Albright,
The  Presidential  Short  Ballot,  34  Am.  Pol.  Sci.  Rev.  955, 
955–957 (1940).  After the popular vote was counted, States
appointed the electors chosen by the party whose presiden-
tial nominee had won statewide, again expecting that they
would vote for that candidate in the Electoral College.1 

—————— 

1 Maine and Nebraska (which, for simplicity’s sake, we will ignore after 
this footnote) developed a more complicated system in which two electors 
go to the winner of the statewide vote and one goes to the winner of each