Article II of the U.S. Constitution reads in part, “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of Electors…”

So-called experts have twisted these words to mean that each State’s Legislature picks the electoral college, not the State’s Governor, nor the State’s Supreme Court. If you continue this twisted meaning, you wonder why States have a popular vote, or if they do why can’t the State Legislature arbitrarily change the results.

I think the word “Manner” is crucial here. What did the founding fathers mean by this word? Did they mean that the Legislature would appoint the Electors directly?

Or did they mean that each State Legislature was free to pick the Manner of how the Electors were chosen?

Certainly that meaning has been used since the first popular election of John Quincy Adams in 1824. There were 24 states total and 18 chose to use a popular vote.John Quincy Adams

Here is from the Massachusetts popular election Fellow Citizens This election ran between October 26 and December 2, 1824.

An insightful article about explaining in a modern context is Interactive Constitution

 
but the actual Electors are appointed according to rules set exclusively by the state legislatures themselves.  Today, 48 states appoint all of their Electors on a “winner take all” basis from slates provided by the top vote-getter in their statewide popular election for president. But two states—Maine and Nebraska—award the Electors by Congressional District and give their remaining two electoral votes to the statewide winner. 

All of these variations are allowable under the constitutional design. As the Supreme Court wrote in McPherson v. Blacker (1892), which rejected a constitutional challenge to a Michigan law providing for selection of Electors by a district system, “the appointment and mode of appointment of Electors belong exclusively to the states under the constitution of the United States.”

This no academic egghead master’s thesis. We have a sore loser in the White House who is determined to shove the election up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

President’s election day speech

"Millions and millions of people voted for us today ... a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people..."

“We’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court — we want all voting to stop.”

I am not quite sure how he can do this. Maybe he will get appeals from Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Arizona, and Nevada fast tracked to the U.S. Supreme Court.

I am so happy that we are most probably getting a vaccine in 2021. Today about 1500 Americans have died from the Corona virus. If this continues days until inauguration, I estimate another 66 x 1500 Americans dead or

(%i1) 66*1500;
(%o1)                                99000

That’s about 100,000 Americans. It is a shame that so much energy is going to twisted legal manuevers and not to getting a coordinated Federal, State and County response. Instead we are seeing super-spreader events, and bizarre strange performances by statesmen, managers (so-called leaders) and leaders who should know better.

An article in USA Today throw cold water has a good link to the usual process and diversions congressional research article