The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a case that challenged California’s electoral process, specifically its “so-called winner-take-all system” approach.
The Supreme Court declined to hear the case and did not elaborate on its decision, leaving it without comment.
The lawsuit took issue with the way California selects its presidential electors. The plaintiffs, comedian Paul Rodriguez, former state Rep. Rocky Chavez, California League of United Latin American Citizens, and League of United Latin American Citizens, argued that the winner-take-all approach is unconstitutional.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs wrote that the method of choosing electors in the state, “by diluting and discarding votes … violates Petitioners’ right to cast an effective vote” and “severs the connection between voters and presidential candidates.”
It “results in the appointment of members of only one political party to the nation’s largest electoral college delegation,” they claimed. “(Winner-take-all) is not within the Constitution. It is instead a partisan invention by the states that has become the default for the nation.”
Worth noting: California has the largest population in the U.S. and currently has 55 electors, the most electoral votes in the country. Since 1992, the state has consistently gone blue in every presidential election.
Attorneys for California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), the defendant in the lawsuit, claimed “there is no cause for concern,” and that the state’s rules do not “treat any voter or group of voters differently from any other or prevent anyone from casting a vote.”
“While a winner-take-all system of awarding presidential electors certainly ‘raises the stakes of victory,’ it does not interfere with petitioners’ ability to associate freely with the political party of their choice or otherwise deprive them of an ‘equal opportunity to win votes,’” the governor’s attorneys wrote.
The attorneys also highlighted that “petitioners are ‘self-identified Republican and third-party voters in California.'”
Not a first: The Supreme Court has thrown out several election-related lawsuits since December, including complaints related to the 2020 election.
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