Thanks in return! I have to admit, I wasn't 100% sure we'd have a rational discussion.
What a state does to appoint its electors is completely up to that particular state (within some limitations, mostly around disenfranchising Black voters.
Yes, those states could have been disenfranchised. But the Electoral college system is all about disenfranchising minorities. There was an almost-successful effort to overturn it, and turn the presidential election into a popular vote in '69 or '70. Didn't pass the Senate due to a filibuster by Southern Dems (who would be Repubs today, post great-sort) They wanted to keep the EC as it made minority votes disappear (e.g. African Americans).
Anyway, on the Federal front, the Supreme Court did not see it at all your way (if they were close they would have heard it).
Can you point to something in the Constitution that lets any state show harm (or even interest) in how another state runs their federal-office elections? I don't see it, but I'm not a lawyer, just trying to 'keep up'.
If there's a Constitutional violation, that'd be a violation of a *State* constitution, and would have to be litigated there.
The Constitution, as I read it, says that state legislatures choose their Electors. That that's changed to a popular vote appears to be a matter of state law (it is in MA, sounded like it was in MI, dunno about the others).
About all those potentially disenfranchised states can do is to push for an end to the Electoral College - but I don't expect they will as, effectively, each voter in a sparsely populated state has more voting-weight (as measured in EC votes per voter) than more populated states - and they'd be giving that up. BTW, based on 2019 pop numbers, voters / electors in ND is 265,082; MA is 626,953; CA is 729,787
Disclaimer: I'd love to see the EC replaced with a popular vote, even if it meant having to show some kind of federal ID to get a federal ballot. Maybe people on the Right could go for that? IDs mean no illegals voting - although I don't think that happens often enough to affect anything.
Also, do folks on the Right mean "African American votes" when they say "unlawful votes"? It's been sounding like that to me, particularly in Southern states...
