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The Electrical College votes which occurred today affect the fact that even in the face of the public health crisis, unlike anything we've experienced in our lifetimes.

People voted. They voted record numbers.

Hannah of the many, many questions that we've received over the last few months and episodes we've made in response, there is one topic that has dominated over all the others, the Electoral College.

And it's not surprising. The 2020 election, like many elections before it, brought conversations about the Electoral College to the four.

But we've already done a big ole episode on the Electoral College for our starter kit series.

That we did, Hannah, that we did. But before we close the book on the complicated system of how we vote for the people who vote for the president, I'd like to introduce you to Neil.

My name is Neil Walter Young. I am a teacher at Lawrence High School in the Fairfield main Go Bulldogs.

Neil is a member of our cabinet. That's a group of educators from across the country who are designing lesson plans to pair with their episodes.

And he wrote me a lovely email about our Electoral College episode. He said that every year he has a lengthy, healthy debate in his class about the pros and the cons of the Electoral College system.

And he wanted to share some of those points with us. Some ideas that didn't make it into that episode. And he wanted to fix something we flat out got wrong.

So that's what we're going to do today. I'm Nick Capodiche. I'm Hannah McCarthy.

And this is an addendum to our episode on the Electoral College. We got something flat out wrong. We got to start with that.

In the episode, a guest misspoke and said that Maine and Nebraska each have two congressional districts.

And this is just main pride showing through even our own public radio. This is this one sometimes. So it's always it. Maine has its lonely to only two representatives in the house.

Nebraska, you know, getting bigger has three got it. And this Maine has four electoral votes and Nebraska five.

All right. What's next? The second point Neil made is that since we released the episode, there's been a 2020 Supreme Court ruling, Chiaflovi, Washington that affects the Electoral College.

Mr. Chief Justice made these this court cases. The question in these cases is straightforward. So the states have the power to control through law. How an electorate vote.

This is the case regarding faithless electors, right? Electors who vote for a candidate other than the one who won the state.

Yeah, in the Chiaflovi ruling, what the Supreme Court said is that states can choose to force the hand of the electors in a number of ways.

But what it makes clear is that this idea of a faithless electors, those can be a thing of the past. There are many states in which there is no punishment whatsoever.

And even those where there is a punishment, it tends not to be more than a thousand dollar fine. If we're in a close election and someone can switch and slap on the hand as a thousand dollars, that doesn't act as a really good bull work against any funny business happening.

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