by Karl Denninger, Market Ticker:

So much for the “laws” trying to bind electors to the popular vote.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the Colorado secretary of state violated the Constitution in 2016 when he removed an elector and nullified his vote because the elector refused to cast his ballot for Democrat Hillary Clinton, who won the popular vote both nationally and in Colorado. The rogue elector was part of an unsuccessful scheme to convince enough members of the Electoral College to unite behind an alternative candidate and deny Donald Trump the presidency.

The split decision by a three-judge panel on the Denver appeals court asserted: “Article II and the Twelfth Amendment provide presidential electors the right to cast a vote for President and Vice President with discretion. And the state does not possess countervailing authority to remove an elector and to cancel his vote in response to the exercise of that Constitutional right.”

have opined that the so-called “Interstate Compact” is unconstitutional on its face because such Compacts require as a matter of the Constitution approval by the federal government itself — that is, by Congressional action signed into law by the President.

There have been “faithless” electors in the past, although they’ve been rare.  There are also state laws in some states that allegedly “bind” electors but none of the states have tried to enforce their “faithless elector” laws — other than a couple of attempts to fine an elector under state law — until Colorado went much further and removed and replaced an elector who refused to vote in accordance with the popular vote total in the state.

This ruling makes those laws dead letters, and further dooms the so-called “Interstate Compact”; as is clear the only means to amend the Constitution’s electoral process is, big shock, to amend the Constitution.

Attempts to go around that requirement were just tossed back as facially invalid and void.

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