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16 

CHIAFALO v. WASHINGTON 

Opinion of the Court 

Rawle  explained  how  the  Electoral  College  functioned: 
“[T]he electors do not assemble in their several states for a 
free exercise of their own judgments, but for the purpose of 
electing”  the  nominee  of  “the  predominant  political  party
which has chosen those electors.”  A View of the Constitu-
tion of the United States of America 57 (2d ed. 1829).  Look-
ing back at the close of the century, this Court had no doubt 
that Story’s and Rawle’s descriptions were right.  The elec-
tors, the Court noted, were chosen “simply to register the 
will of the appointing power in respect of a particular can-
didate.”  McPherson, 146 U. S., at 36. 

State election laws evolved to reinforce that development,
ensuring that a State’s electors would vote the same way as 
its  citizens.  As  noted  earlier,  state  legislatures  early
dropped out of the picture; by the mid-1800s, ordinary vot-
ers  chose  electors.    See  supra,  at  4.  Except  that  increas-
ingly, they did not do so directly.  States listed only presi-
dential candidates on the ballot, on the understanding that
electors would do no more than vote for the winner.  Usu-
ally, the State could ensure that result by appointing elec-
tors chosen by the winner’s party.  But to remove any doubt,
States began in the early 1900s to enact statutes requiring 
electors to pledge that they would squelch any urge to break 
ranks with voters.  See supra, at 5.  Washington’s law, pe-
nalizing a pledge’s breach, is only another in the same vein. 
It reflects a tradition more than two centuries old.  In that 
practice, electors are not free agents; they are to vote for the 
candidate whom the State’s voters have chosen. 

The  history  going  the  opposite  way  is  one  of  anomalies
only.  The Electors stress that since the founding, electors
have cast some 180 faithless votes for either President or 
Vice President.  See Brief for Petitioners 7.  But that is 180 
out of over 23,000.  See Brief for Republican National Com-
mittee as Amicus Curiae 19.  And more than a third of the 
faithless  votes  come  from  1872,  when  the  Democratic 
Party’s  nominee  (Horace  Greeley)  died  just  after  Election