Decision has the potential to upend the way America picks its president ahead of the 2020 election
By Anna Staver | The Denver Post
Colorado is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether the people picked to cast Electoral College votes are bound by their state’s rules on how to vote — a decision that has the potential to upend the way America picks its president ahead of the 2020 election.
“The idea that nine electors in Colorado that are unelected, unaccountable and that Coloradans really don’t know could disregard our state law and the outcome of the general election is really unfathomable,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said Wednesday in announcing the action with Attorney General Phil Weiser. “This is a major decision, and we are hopeful the Supreme Court will do the right thing and protect our constitutional democracy.”
The case is about what happened a few weeks after the 2016 election, when three Democratic Party electors, Micheal Baca, Polly Baca and Robert Nemanich, were told by then-Secretary of State Wayne Williams that state law required them to vote for Hillary Clinton because she won Colorado’s popular vote. The three Democrats wanted to vote for Republican John Kasich, then-governor of Ohio, as part of a national effort to convince electors to break their states’ rules and deny Donald Trump the 270 Electoral College votes needed to become president.
They wanted to be “faithless electors.”
