Electoral College issue.

Colorado wants the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether presidential electors can choose a candidate or are bound by the popular vote in their states.

Colorado is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether the people picked to cast Electoral College votes are bound by their state’s rules on how to vote — a decision that has the potential to upend the way America picks its president ahead of the 2020 election.

“The idea that nine electors in Colorado that are unelected, unaccountable and that Coloradans really don’t know could disregard our state law and the outcome of the general election is really unfathomable,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said Wednesday in announcing the action with Attorney General Phil Weiser. “This is a major decision, and we are hopeful the Supreme Court will do the right thing and protect our constitutional democracy.”

The case is about what happened a few weeks after the 2016 election, when three Democratic Party electors, Micheal Baca, Polly Baca and Robert Nemanich, were told by thenSecretary of State Wayne Williams that state law required them to vote for Hillary Clinton because she won Colorado’s popular vote. The three Democrats wanted to vote for Republican John Kasich, then-governor of Ohio, as part of a national effort to convince electors to break their states’ rules and deny Donald Trump the 270 Electoral College votes needed to become president.

They wanted to be “faithless electors.”

Polly Baca and Nemanich eventually agreed to vote for Clinton, but Micheal Baca did not. Williams, a Republican, ultimately replaced him, and the three electors sued.

A lower court dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that the electors lacked standing. The 10th Circuit reversed part of that decision in August when it wrote that Micheal Baca could legally challenge his dismissal, and “the state’s removal of Mr. Baca and nullification of his vote were unconstitutional.”

That’s the opposite of the way Washington State’s Supreme Court ruled in May when it upheld $1,000 fines levied against its own faithless electors.

“There’s a different rule of law in Washington than there is in Colorado. That is not healthy,” Weiser said. “This is a basic constitutional principle that deserves a uniform standard.”

Attorneys for the electors in both Washington and Colorado agree the nation’s top court should settle the question.

“Colorado is absolutely right that the Supreme Court must hear this case,” said Lawrence Lessig, founder of Equal Citizens and one of the lawyers for the electors. “And it must do so as soon as possible before this unsettled issue causes chaos in the 2020 election or one soon after.”

Neither the U.S. Constitution nor federal law requires electors to vote according to the results of the popular vote in their states. However, 28 states have laws binding electors’ votes to the winner of the popular vote and some of those, like Colorado, include punishing “faithless electors” with fines and even prosecution.

Jason Harrow, co-counsel for the electors, said the Constitution gives states the power to appoint electors but not to control them.

“Those are two very different things,” Harrow said.