The voters’ will is upheld

The Electoral College is a seriously flawed system for electing a president, but as long as it exists, its concept should be followed. In a unanimous ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court has taken a significant step in preventing manipulation of the system by stating that the electors chosen by the states must vote in accordance with their states’ vote.

The high court’s ruling will allow states to punish or replace “faithless electors” who think of themselves as free agents when they formally cast their votes in the month after the presidential election.

Most states require that the candidate who gained a plurality of a state’s votes in the general election receive all of its electoral votes. The two exceptions are Nebraska and Maine, which award two votes for the statewide winner and one vote for the winner of each congressional district.

The Supreme Court ruling was well timed in advance of November. No U.S. election has ever been decided by a breakaway elector, but the possibility exists in a close contest. The cases before the court were brought by Washington and Colorado, each of which was won by Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 but faced a minor faithles-selector revolt.

That desperate scheme aimed to peel off Republican electors from voting for Donald Trump, but in the end only seven electors defied their state’s wishes — five of which were in Clinton states, with two Texans voting for alternatives to Trump. One of the cofounders of the “Hamilton Electors,” Micheal Baca of Colorado, had been replaced with an alternate before the final count after he announced he would vote for Republican John Kasich.

The state of Washington, meanwhile, moved to fine three electors $1,000 each after they voted for Colin Powell.

Trump prevailed over Clinton in the Electoral College, 304 to 227, but arguments over the Constitution’s ambiguity over the freedom of stateappointed electors could become more than a scholarly dispute in this era of a deeply polarized nation. After all, George W. Bush prevailed by just five electoral votes over Al Gore in 2000.

We’ll save the arguments of the legitimacy of the Electoral College for another day. It now has taken the presidency away from the winner of the national popular vote in two of the past five elections.

It may be undemocratic and an anachronism, but its rules must be followed. The Supreme Court just guaranteed it.