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Page Number: 11.0

8 

CHIAFALO v. WASHINGTON 

Opinion of the Court 

II 

As the state court recognized, this Court has considered
elector  pledge  requirements  before.    Some  seventy  years 
ago Edmund Blair tried to become a presidential elector in
Alabama.  Like all States, Alabama lodged the authority to
pick  electors  in  the  political  parties  fielding  presidential 
candidates.  And the Alabama Democratic Party required a
pledge  phrased  much  like  Washington’s  today.    No  one 
could get on the party’s slate of electors without agreeing to
vote in the Electoral College for the Democratic presidential 
candidate.  Blair  challenged  the  pledge  mandate.  He  ar-
gued  that  the  “intention  of  the  Founders  was  that  [presi-
dential] electors should exercise their judgment in voting.” 
Ray, 343 U. S., at 225.  The pledge requirement, he claimed, 
“interfere[d]  with  the  performance  of  this  constitutional 
duty to select [a president] according to the best judgment
of the elector.”  Ibid. 

Our decision in Ray rejected that challenge.  “Neither the 
language  of  Art. II,  §1,  nor  that  of  the  Twelfth  Amend-
ment,” we explained, prohibits a State from appointing only
electors committed to vote for a party’s presidential candi-
date.  Ibid.  Nor did the Nation’s history suggest such a bar.
To  the  contrary,  “[h]istory  teaches  that  the  electors  were
expected to support the party nominees” as far back as the
earliest  contested  presidential  elections. 
Id.,  at  228. 
“[L]ongstanding practice” thus “weigh[ed] heavily” against 
Blair’s claim.  Id., at 228–230.  And current voting proce-
dures did too.  The Court noted that by then many States
did  not  even  put  electors’  names  on  a  presidential  ballot.
See  id.,  at  229.  The  whole  system  presupposed  that  the
electors, because of either an “implied” or an “oral pledge,” 
would vote for the candidate who had won the State’s pop-
ular election.  Ibid. 

Ray, however, reserved a question not implicated in the 
case:  Could  a  State  enforce  those  pledges  through  legal