The scenario we see as the most alarming was made possible by the Supreme Court itself. In a 2020 decision, the court held, in our reading, that state legislatures have the power to direct electors on how to cast their electoral votes. And this opens the door to what we think is the most dangerous strategy: that a legislature would pass a law that directs electors to vote for the candidate the legislature picks.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
After the assault on the nation’s Capitol three years ago, we worked through every strategy we could imagine for subverting the popular will by manipulating the law.
We also concluded that the most blatantly extreme strategies, such as a state canceling its election and selecting its electors directly, are politically unlikely.
The electors, the Supreme Court decided, had no constitutional right to resist the laws in a state that directed how they must vote.
The danger now is that this decision has created an obvious strategy for a state legislature seeking to ensure the election of its preferred candidate, regardless of how the people voted.
There are plenty of mechanisms to ensure that the election selects the right slate of electors — recounts, contest proceedings and so on.
Absent that turn of events, in the rush between an election and the day when electors actually cast their votes, there may well be no time for the court to close the loophole that its opinion opened.
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