This is the exact scenario I tweeted wks ago after I had dinner w/group of election law experts who were worried that GOP governors could cancel presidential election and their state electoral votes could be assigned to Trump without the public ever voting slate.com/news-and-polit…
“if Trump does not want to risk a loss at the polls, he can exploit a constitutional shortcut [and] ask Republican-controlled state legislatures to assign their electoral votes to him—without allowing any citizen to cast a ballot... [and] it would be legal.”
“the Constitution...explains that each state ‘shall appoint’ its electors ‘in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.’ In other words, each state legislature gets to decide how electors are appointed—and, by extension, who gets their votes...
“Today, every state legislature has delegated this task to the people [but] it is perfectly constitutional for a state legislature to scrap statewide elections for president and appoint electors itself...
“It would also be constitutional for a state legislature to disregard the winner of the statewide vote and assign electors to the loser. And because the Constitution grants legislatures the authority to pick electors this way, Congress cannot stop them.”
