Chiafalo v. Washington Case Brief

Chiafalo v. Washington

591 U.S. 578 | 140 S. Ct. 2316 | 207 L. Ed. 2d 761

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Takeaway

In short, this case holds that States may require presidential electors to follow the State’s popular vote and may punish or otherwise replace electors who cast faithless Electoral College votes.

Background

Washington selects presidential electors through party slates tied to the State’s popular presidential vote. Its law required electors to pledge that they would vote for their party’s presidential and vice-presidential nominees. At the time of the 2016 election, an elector who voted for someone else could be fined up to $1,000.

Washington voters chose Hillary Clinton, so the State appointed Democratic electors, including Peter Chiafalo, Levi Guerra, and Esther John. Although each had pledged to support Clinton, all three voted for Colin Powell in an unsuccessful effort to deny Donald Trump an Electoral College majority. Washington imposed a $1,000 fine on each elector.

The electors challenged the fines, claiming that the Constitution gives presidential electors discretion to vote for whomever they choose. The Washington Supreme Court upheld the law, relying substantially on Ray v. Blair, which had sustained a State’s authority to require an elector’s pledge. The Tenth Circuit later reached the opposite conclusion in a Colorado case, holding that a State could not remove an elector for casting a faithless vote. The Supreme Court granted review to resolve that conflict.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether a State may enforce a law requiring presidential electors to vote for the presidential and vice-presidential candidates chosen by the State’s voters, including by penalizing faithless electors.

Holding

Yes. A State may enforce an elector’s pledge to support the candidates selected by the State’s voters and may penalize an elector who casts a faithless vote.

Reasoning

Article II gives each State authority to appoint electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” That appointment power is broad and includes authority to impose conditions on an elector’s appointment. Just as a State may require an elector to pledge support for a party’s nominees, it may require the elector to honor that pledge through a sanction, absent another constitutional restriction.

Neither Article II nor the Twelfth Amendment expressly grants electors a right to exercise independent judgment. Those provisions say that States appoint electors and that electors meet, vote by ballot, and transmit the results. The constitutional words “electors,” “vote,” and “ballot” do not inherently require discretion: a person can vote or cast a ballot while acting under binding instructions.

The Framers could have expressly required electors to act according to their independent judgment and conscience, as some state constitutions of the founding era did for other electoral bodies. But the Federal Constitution contains no comparable language. General expectations expressed by some Framers, including Hamilton’s hope that electors would deliberate, cannot add a limitation that the constitutional text does not contain.

Historical practice strongly confirms that electors became agents for the people or legislatures that selected them, rather than independent decisionmakers. By the first contested presidential election in 1796, prospective electors publicly aligned themselves with particular candidates, and nearly all voted as expected. Political parties and the Twelfth Amendment quickly entrenched party-line Electoral College voting.

For more than two centuries, States have used popular elections, party slates, pledge requirements, and related mechanisms to ensure that electoral votes reflect the preferences of state voters. Faithless votes have been rare—only a tiny fraction of all electoral votes—and Congress’s occasional counting of such votes does not establish a constitutional entitlement to cast them, especially where the appointing State did not forbid faithlessness.

Ray v. Blair had already held that States may require electors to pledge support for their party’s nominees. Although Ray reserved the question whether a State could enforce a pledge with sanctions, its textual and historical reasoning supports enforcement. Washington’s fine therefore continues, rather than departs from, the longstanding understanding that electors may be bound to carry out their State’s choice.

Concurrences

Justice Thomas

Reasoning

Justice Thomas agreed that Washington could require electors to vote for the candidates chosen by the State’s people, but he rejected the majority’s effort to locate that authority in Article II. In his view, Article II’s direction that each State appoint electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct” imposes a duty on States to establish a method of appointment; it does not itself confer a broad substantive power to regulate electors after they have been appointed.

He read “Manner” to mean the method or form of selecting electors, not qualifications for electors or restrictions on their later votes. The founding-era history concerned whether legislatures, voters, or other bodies would select electors. And because Article I’s parallel reference to the “Manner” of congressional elections has been understood to concern procedural regulations rather than substantive qualifications, he concluded that Article II should not receive the broader reading adopted by the Court.

Justice Thomas also maintained that Washington’s fine was not genuinely a condition of appointment. The statute imposed a civil penalty on an elector who voted for an unauthorized candidate; it did not make liability turn on the breach of a pledge or otherwise tie the penalty to the appointment process. That distinction mattered because the majority’s Article II theory rested on the State’s claimed power to condition appointment.

The proper basis for the result, Justice Thomas concluded, was the Tenth Amendment’s default rule. The Federal Government has only delegated powers, while States retain powers not prohibited by the Constitution. Because the Constitution neither expressly nor by necessary implication forbids States from binding electors, Washington retained authority to do so. Justice Gorsuch joined Part II of this concurrence.