Colorado, they are
appointed by the people.--[Electoral Commission, p. 204.

If then it be true that the power to determine how the presidential
electors shall be appointed is derived from the national
constitution, and that power is a discretionary one, to be
exercised in such manner as the legislature may direct, how can it
be said that a State constitution can limit or control the
legislative discretion? If the State can limit that discretion in
one respect it can limit it in another, and in another, and in
another, until it may shut up the legislature to but a single mode
of appointment, which is to take away, and absolutely destroy all
its discretion, and this is nullification, pure and simple. One of
the questions before the electoral commission in the case of South
Carolina, was whether the electoral vote of that State should not
be rejected because the legislature, in providing for the
appointment of the electors, had failed to obey a requirement of
the State constitution in regard to a registry law. This raised, in
principle, the very question we are now considering, and on that
question Senator O. P. Morton, who was a member of the commission,
and who was an able lawyer as well as a great statesman, thus
expressed himself:

They [the presidential electors] are to be appointed in the
manner prescribed by the legislature of the State, and not by the
constitution of the State. The manner of the appointment of
electors has been placed by the Constitution of the United States
in the legislature of each State, and cannot be taken from that
body by the provisions of a State constitution. * * * The power
to appoint electors by a State, is conferred by the Constitution
of the United States, and does not spring from a State
constitution, and cannot be impaired or controlled by a State
constitution.--[Electoral Commission, p. 200.

The distinguished lawyer and statesman [Hon. William Lawrence] who
made the principle argument before the commission in favor of
admitting the vote of the State, took the same ground (Electoral
Commission, p. 186).

The opinion of Justice Story, expressed in the Massachusetts
constitutional convention of 1820, on a very similar question, and
one involving the same principle, quoted by Mr. Lawrence in his
argument, is very high authority, and I reproduce it here. He
(Justice Story) said:

The question then was whether we have