This is truly bizarre. A Harvard Law Professor is representing a couple of presidential electors who claim that they should be free to vote for anyone they want, despite state laws requiring them to vote for the candidate for whom they pledged to vote when they got on the ballot in the first place.
But, if we are to believe reports, we need have no fear that a victory for these plaintiffs would further undermine our already unfair presidential election process.
Harvard Law professor Larry Lessig, who represents the plaintiffs, is aware of that possibility. Indeed, it seems to be his goal. Lessig wants to make the Electoral College so wacky and unpredictable that the entire country turns against it, then adopts a constitutional amendment creating a nationwide popular vote for president. The justices appeared to be aware of this end goal on Wednesday. And they had no apparent interest in facilitating Lessig’s master plan.
Assuming Lessig’s motives are being fairly reported, one must ask, how stupid do you have to be to teach at Harvard Law? Here are the chances that a constitutional amendment to elect the president by popular vote would get a two thirds vote in Congress and pass in two thirds of the states: Zero.
There is no way that the sparsely populated red states needed to garner those percentages would give up the outsize influence they have over the selection of the president, just as they would never go along with a reform that would enable the majority of the people in this country to actually determine government policy by, for instance, giving populated states such as California a greater voice in the Senate than states like Wyoming. It is simply not going to happen. That particular bit of bad judgment by our sainted Founders may eventually pave our road to ruin, but it will never be reformed. If Lessig were to win his case, the most likely result would be that state legislatures, particularly in the red states, would simply exercise their constitutional prerogative to name the electors on their own without input from the voters at all. In my opinion, there’s a very real chance that gerrymandered legislatures like that in Wisconsin may try exactly that very soon. After all, it’s what the Founders originally intended, and as Hamilton and Madison assured us, the electors chosen would surely be the wisest and most prudent among us.
Maybe Lessig is too busy to read the newspapers. It is a sad day when the current Supreme Court appears set to be the voice of reason, but it appears to be the case that even this Supreme Court isn’t ready to destroy the Republic in this particular way.