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CHIAFALO v. WASHINGTON 

Syllabus 

such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.”  This Court has 
described that clause as “conveying the broadest power of determina-
tion” over who becomes an elector.  McPherson v. Blacker, 146 U. S. 1, 
27.  And  the  power  to  appoint  an  elector  (in  any  manner)  includes 
power to condition his appointment, absent some other constitutional
constraint.  A State can require, for example, that an elector live in the 
State or qualify as a regular voter during the relevant time period.  Or 
more substantively, a State can insist (as Ray allowed) that the elector
pledge to cast his Electoral College ballot for his party’s presidential
nominee, thus tracking the State’s popular vote.  Or—so long as noth-
ing else in the Constitution poses an obstacle—a State can add an as-
sociated condition of appointment: It can demand that the elector ac-
tually live up to his pledge, on pain of penalty.  Which is to say that 
the State’s appointment power, barring some outside constraint, ena-
bles the enforcement of a pledge like Washington’s.

Nothing in the Constitution expressly prohibits States from taking
away presidential electors’ voting discretion as Washington does.  Ar-
ticle II includes only the instruction to each State to appoint electors, 
and the Twelfth Amendment only sets out the electors’ voting proce-
dures.  And while two contemporaneous State Constitutions incorpo-
rated  language  calling  for  the  exercise  of  elector  discretion,  no  lan-
guage of that kind made it into the Federal Constitution.  Contrary to 
the Electors’ argument, Article II’s use of the term “electors” and the 
Twelfth Amendment’s requirement that the electors “vote,” and that 
they do so “by ballot,” do not establish that electors must have discre-
tion.  The Electors and their amici object that the Framers using those 
words expected the Electors’ votes to reflect their own judgments.  But 
even assuming that outlook was widely shared, it would not be enough. 
Whether  by  choice  or  accident,  the  Framers  did  not  reduce  their 
thoughts about electors’ discretion to the printed page.  Pp. 8–13.

(b) “Long settled and established practice” may have “great weight 
in  a  proper  interpretation  of  constitutional  provisions.”  The  Pocket 
Veto Case, 279 U. S. 655, 689.  The Electors make an appeal to that 
kind  of  practice  in  asserting  their  right  to  independence,  but  “our 
whole experience as a Nation” points in the opposite direction.  NLRB 
v. Noel Canning, 573 U. S. 513, 557.  From the first elections under the 
Constitution, States sent electors to the College to vote for pre-selected 
candidates, rather than to use their own judgment.  The electors rap-
idly  settled  into  that  non-discretionary  role.    See  Ray,  343  U. S.,  at 
228–229.  Ratified at the start of the 19th century, the Twelfth Amend-
ment both acknowledged and facilitated the Electoral College’s emer-
gence  as  a  mechanism  not  for  deliberation  but  for  party-line  voting. 
Courts  and  commentators  throughout  that  century  recognized  the 
presidential  electors  as  merely  acting  on  other  people’s  preferences.