States can punish 'faithless' electors, Supreme Court rules
Source:
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/06/supreme-court-faithless-electors-349728

My Comment:
This ruling by the Supreme court is meaningless. Sure the states "can" create a law to "punish" a faithless elector. But will there? Not likely. Very few states have any punishment provision for so-called faithless electors that are actually voting their conscience.
In fact, if there was no choice by an elector, what is the point of even having them?? The truth is, electors are the final arbiters to protect the process. They are placed there with a choice, by our founding fathers, as a final option to balance an injustice that they feel has been made.
Electors are human beings like jurors, with a mind and a choice. And in a jury trail one juror of the 12 can stop the entire prosecution in its tracks. It was designed to do just that - to make sure there isn't a shadow of doubt on an outcome.
A presidential election is no different, it is a form of a trail, and in the case of a massive fraudulent vote count going on by several states, electors can then correct that crime by voting their conscience and correcting an injustice. Electors are not mindless machines, they have a choice. In 98% of national elections the electoral college system deliberates and functions as planned, and the electors see no reason to vote differently than the citizens of their state has voted. But, they are the built in emergency "fail safe" in the American election process to avoid an unfair outcome.

This ruling by the Supreme court did not force the states to punish electors with fines if they vote their conscience. All they said was, you have a choice to do so if that is what the state government decides on doing. In my opinion, more and more rulings by the courts are moving away from the spirit of the Constitution. If any political system of government is infected by corruption and lack of honor and statesmanship, that government is doomed to fail. And we see that in banana republics.
In the 2016 election between Trump and Hillary Clinton, there was evidence that quite a few electors were contacted by parties that offered them huge sums of money to switch their vote, and many did. Fortunately it balanced out because some electors in a state where Clinton won the state, switched their vote for Trump, so it balanced out. A measly $1,000 fine for switching your vote is meaningless compared to a $150,000 bribe "incentive". George Eaton