8 CHIAFALO v. WASHINGTON Opinion of the Court II As the state court recognized, this Court has considered elector pledge requirements before. Some seventy years ago Edmund Blair tried to become a presidential elector in Alabama. Like all States, Alabama lodged the authority to pick electors in the political parties fielding presidential candidates. And the Alabama Democratic Party required a pledge phrased much like Washington’s today. No one could get on the party’s slate of electors without agreeing to vote in the Electoral College for the Democratic presidential candidate. Blair challenged the pledge mandate. He argued that the “intention of the Founders was that [presidential] electors should exercise their judgment in voting.” Ray, 343 U. S., at 225. The pledge requirement, he claimed, “interfere[d] with the performance of this constitutional duty to select [a president] according to the best judgment of the elector.” Ibid. Our decision in Ray rejected that challenge. “Neither the language of Art. II, §1, nor that of the Twelfth Amendment,” we explained, prohibits a State from appointing only electors committed to vote for a party’s presidential candidate. Ibid. Nor did the Nation’s history suggest such a bar. To the contrary, “[h]istory teaches that the electors were expected to support the party nominees” as far back as the earliest contested presidential elections. Id., at 228. “[L]ongstanding practice” thus “weigh[ed] heavily” against Blair’s claim. Id., at 228–230. And current voting procedures did too. The Court noted that by then many States did not even put electors’ names on a presidential ballot. See id., at 229. The whole system presupposed that the electors, because of either an “implied” or an “oral pledge,” would vote for the candidate who had won the State’s popular election. Ibid. Ray, however, reserved a question not implicated in the case: Could a State enforce those pledges through legal