The U.S. Supreme Court has scheduled Igartua v U.S. for its conference of March 17 (05-650). The issue is whether U.S. citizens living in Puerto Rico have a constitutional right to vote for president. The case highlights an important contradiction in the U.S. Constitution and federal and state laws concerning presidential elections. On the one hand, Article One plainly says that the states choose presidential electors. Therefore, no citizen of the U.S. is voting for president in November of presidential election years. State legislatures in all 50 states have granted the voters the right to choose that state’s presidential electors. With this understanding of our presidential election system, plainly U.S. citizens living in U.S. territories have no claim on a right to vote for president.

On the other hand, federal campaign laws, and various state ballot access laws, all presume that the voters are voting for president in November. There are no federal or state campaign finance laws relating to candidates for presidential elector. In theory then, anyone running for presidential elector is free to raise and spend as much money as he or she wishes, and anyone is free to donate an unlimited amount of money.

Some states have ballot access laws that purport to outlaw anyone running in a major party presidential primary and then appearing on a November ballot as an independent presidential candidate. Yet if the true election in November is for presidential elector, these laws make no sense. These laws purport to ban “sore losers”, yet the candidates for presidential electors didn’t run in any presidential primary earlier, and therefore they aren’t “sore losers”.

There is some indication that the U.S. Supreme Court is interested in these contradictions, and might just decide to hear the case. Conference results won’t be released to the public until March 20 at the earliest.