“If a state wants to have its legislature pick the electors, they may do so”
The constitution might say that, but when the people have been voting for their state’s electors for a long period, what do you think would happen if a state decided it would no longer allow its citizens to vote for the electors to the electoral college?
Legislators once appointed their state’s US senators, but that was changed to a vote of the people with the XVII Amendment. If the people’s vote for presidential electors were taken away and given to a state legislature, it would be challenged and the case would probably be used to overturn that provision, just as other provisions of the constitution have been overturned.
Technically, a state might be able to take that vote from the its citizens, but the political realities and our judicial system would not allow that to happen. The legislature that passed such laws and the governors that signed it would be voted out at the first opportunity, but no state will pass such laws in this day and time.
There might also be case law over the past 230 or so years that affects what states can and cannot do in relation to the electoral college.
One person noted that he or she wished that SCOTUS had not ruled in the 2000 Florida vote dispute, but rather had left it to the Florida legislature. But SCOTUS did rule. So, it’s not so crystal clear that all decisions concerning a state’s electors are left to the states as some here contend.
And SCOTUS was right to end that circus being staged by the Democrat hacks on the Florida Supreme Court. They’d ordered one recount, but didn’t get the answer they wanted. So, they ordered a second recount. That one didn’t come out right, either, so they were about to order a third recount, and that’s when SCOTUS properly reviewed the case and put an end to the nonsense being carried on by the Florida court.
And, several news and other organizations did their own recounts after the fact and none showed that Gore should have won.
Your claim is quite simply nonsense. The Constitution does not grant the people the right to pick electors, it never has and it never will. And electors, once chosen, are not bound by any law to vote in a particular way.
In the most recent case, Gore v. Bush in 2000, the vote denying the Florida Supreme Court's action was 7-2. People focus on the 14th Amendment dimensions for that decision, but the truth is that the three conservative Justices then on the Court (Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas) did not agree to an equal protection violation. They ruled -- correctly -- that the Florida Supreme Court had violated Article II, § 1, cl. 2 of the Constitution, by misinterpreting Florida election law that had been enacted by the Florida Legislature, and they made it clear that the Legislature alone had the authority to choose the manner of selecting electors. If that vote were held again tomorrow, the vote would have 4 votes for the Article II violation, and the equal protection clause would become the subordinate (concurring opinion) and the plenary power of the legislatures of the states to name electors would be not only de facto but de jure as well. You are simply wrong. No federal court would overturn the legislatures' authority. There are a number of precedents beside this most recent one, and they do not support your position.
As for popular election of Senators, it was a mistake to do that. It weakened a Federalism already weakened by the 14th Amendment. But it was done itself by Amending the Constitution, and was not done by the people nor was it done by the Courts, neither of whom have anything to say about it.