Article II, Section 1, Clause 2:

Each State shall appoint,in a Manner as Legislatures thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

Analysis:

Although Clause 2 seemingly vests complete discretion in the states, certain older cases had recognized a federal interest in protecting the integrity of the process. Thus, the Court upheld the power of Congress to protect the right of all citizens who are entitled to vote to lend aid and support in any legal manner to the election of any legally qualified person as a presidential elector.3 Its power to protect the choice of electors from fraud or corruption was sustained.4 If this government is anything more than a mere aggregation of delegated agents of other States and governments, each of which is superior to the general government, it must have the power to protect the elections on which its existence depends from violence and corruption. If it has not this power it is helpless before the two great natural and historical enemies of all republics, open violence and insidious corruption.5

More recently, substantial curbs on state discretion have been instituted by both the Court and the Congress. In Williams v. Rhodes,6 the Court struck down a complex state system that effectively limited access to the ballot to the electors of the two major parties. In the Court’s view, the system violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because it favored some and disfavored others and burdened both the right of individuals to associate together to advance political beliefs and the right of qualified voters to cast ballots for electors of their choice. For the Court, Justice Black denied that the language of Clause 2 immunized such state practices from judicial scrutiny.7 Then, in Oregon v. Mitchell,8 the Court upheld the power of Congress to reduce the voting age in presidential elections9 and to set a thirty-day durational residency period as a qualification for voting in presidential elections.10 Although the Justices were divided on the reasons, the rationale emerging from this case, considered with Williams v. Rhodes,11 is that the Fourteenth Amendment limits state discretion in prescribing the manner of selecting electors and that Congress in enforcing the Fourteenth Amendment12 may override state practices that violate that Amendment and may substitute standards of its own.

Whether state enactments implementing the authority to appoint electors are subject to the ordinary processes of judicial review within a state, or whether placement of the appointment authority in state legislatures somehow limits the role of state judicial review, became an issue during the controversy over the Florida recount and the outcome of the 2000 presidential election. The Supreme Court did not resolve this issue, but in a remand to the Florida Supreme Court, suggested that the role of state courts in applying state constitutions may be constrained by operation of Clause 2.13 Three Justices elaborated on this view in Bush v. Gore,14 but the Court ended the litigation—and the recount—on the basis of an equal protection interpretation, without ruling on the Article II argument.