Hi We The People listeners, I'm Jackie McDermott, the show's producer.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments by teleconference in the first two weeks of May

and the National Constitution Center recapped all of those arguments live on C-SPAN. This week on the podcast

we're sharing another one of those argument recaps, recapping two cases about

faithless electors and the Electoral College. These cases ask whether states can remove or penalize

presidential electors members of the Electoral College who refused to vote for

the candidate who won the state's popular vote. David Koppel and Paul Smith joined us to recap these arguments.

Koppel wrote a brief in support of the so-called Faithless Electors on behalf of the Independence

Institute where he's the research director.

Paul Smith wrote a brief in support of the states on behalf of the campaign legal center where he's

vice president of litigation and strategy.

So Paul and David joined host Jeffrey Rosen to recap. and David will begin with you because you are representing petitioners and we heard in the argument that at least in the first case the petitioners

represented by professor Lawrence Lessig went first

tell us if you will. What provisions of the constitutional text do the

electors rely on to support their argument that they must have the power under the Constitution to exercise independent judgment

and that state laws forbidding them from exercising independent judgment violate the Constitution?

The key things I'd say are Article II, Section 1, which created the original system for

how the President would be elected, and then the modifications to that in the 12th

amendment which was adopted in 1804 and that changed some of the voting

provisions but left most of the left all of the relevant provisions from Article,

original Article II intact and actually repeated them

in similar language.

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