Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/19-465_i425.pdf
Page Number: 13.0

10 

CHIAFALO v. WASHINGTON 

Opinion of the Court 

ballot  for  his  party’s  presidential  nominee,  thus  tracking 
the  State’s  popular  vote.  See  Ray,  343  U. S.,  at  227  (A
pledge requirement “is an exercise of the state’s right to ap-
point electors in such manner” as it chooses).  Or—so long
as  nothing  else  in  the  Constitution  poses  an  obstacle—a
State can add, as Washington did, an associated condition
of appointment: It can demand that the elector actually live 
up to his pledge, on pain of penalty.  Which is to say that
the State’s appointment power, barring some outside con-
straint, enables the enforcement of a pledge like Washing-
ton’s.6 

And  nothing  in  the  Constitution  expressly  prohibits
States  from  taking  away  presidential  electors’  voting  dis-
cretion as Washington does.  The Constitution is barebones 
about  electors.    Article  II  includes  only  the  instruction  to
each  State  to  appoint,  in  whatever  way  it  likes,  as  many
electors as it has Senators and Representatives (except that
the State may not appoint members of the Federal Govern-
ment).  The Twelfth Amendment then tells electors to meet 
in their States, to vote for President and Vice President sep-
arately, and to transmit lists of all their votes to the Presi-
dent  of  the  United  States  Senate  for  counting.  Appoint-
ments and procedures and . . . that is all.  See id., at 225. 

The Framers could have done it differently; other consti-
tutional drafters of their time did.  In the founding era, two 

—————— 

6 The concurring opinion would have us make fine distinctions among
state laws punishing faithless voting—treating some as conditions of ap-
pointment and others not, depending on small semantic differences.  See 
post, at 6–9 (distinguishing, for example, between Oklahoma’s law fining
an  elector  for  violating  his  oath  (to  vote  for  his  party’s  candidate)  and 
Washington’s law fining an elector for not voting for his party’s candidate 
(whom he took an oath to support)).  The Electors themselves raised no 
such argument, and they were right not to do so.  No matter the precise 
phrasing,  a  law  penalizing  faithless  voting  (like  a  law  merely  barring
that practice) is an exercise of the State’s power to impose conditions on
the appointment of electors.  See Ray v. Blair, 343 U. S. 154, 227 (1952).