The context here is Federal elections for President and Congress--Maine's Federal Senate race is also via rank-choice, as mentioned in the second paragraph/sent

The context here is Federal elections for President and Congress--Maine's Federal Senate race is also via rank-choice, as mentioned in the second paragraph/sentence of the linked article. To another commenter's argument that switching to ranked-choice voting for those elections would require bipartisan support, you had retorted that > Maine voters passed [ranked-choice voting] via ballot measure, no partisan politicking required. Likewise, the two states voting on it this year, Alaska and Massachusetts, are also doing so via ballot measure. My point is that for Federal congressional elections the legal capacity to use voter initiatives to institute different voting rules, bypassing partisan state legislatures and Congress, will likely be extinguished in the coming years. The same is likely true for Presidential elections as the relevant constitutional language is nearly identical: "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors...." My comment about Thomas' view (uncited--I could be misremembering the nuances) about who gets to pass laws controlling state legislature elections was merely to suggest how likely he would be to overturn Arizona; his opinion about the Constitution's and SCOTUS' role in dictating/safeguarding a very specific form of representative government extends beyond a simplistic plain text[1] interpretation of the aforementioned constitutional clauses. [1] I feel like I should point out that no justice, conservative or otherwise, subscribes to a "plain text" philosophy of constitutional interpretation. Conservatives justices tend to espouse either a so-called Original Intent philosophy or Scalia's Original Meaning philosophy, where "Original Meaning" is not the same thing as "plain text". And justices of all political philosophies will make a "plain text" argument when it suits their interpretation. All things being equal (though they rarely are), everybody tends to agree a plain text defense is the best defense.