Cite as: 591 U. S. ____ (2020) 13 Opinion of the Court Framers did not reduce their thoughts about electors’ discretion to the printed page. All that they put down about the electors was what we have said: that the States would appoint them, and that they would meet and cast ballots to send to the Capitol. Those sparse instructions took no position on how independent from—or how faithful to—party and popular preferences the electors’ votes should be. On that score, the Constitution left much to the future. And the future did not take long in coming. Almost immediately, presidential electors became trusty transmitters of other people’s decisions. B “Long settled and established practice” may have “great weight in a proper interpretation of constitutional provisions.” The Pocket Veto Case, 279 U. S. 655, 689 (1929). As James Madison wrote, “a regular course of practice” can “liquidate & settle the meaning of ” disputed or indeterminate “terms & phrases.” Letter to S. Roane (Sept. 2, 1819), in 8 Writings of James Madison 450 (G. Hunt ed. 1908); see The Federalist No. 37, at 225. The Electors make an appeal to that kind of practice in asserting their right to independence. But “our whole experience as a Nation” points in the opposite direction. NLRB v. Noel Canning, 573 U. S. 513, 557 (2014) (internal quotation marks omitted). Electors have only rarely exercised discretion in casting their ballots for President. From the first, States sent them to the Electoral College—as today Washington does—to vote for preselected candidates, rather than to use their own judgment. And electors (or at any rate, almost all of them) rapidly settled into that non-discretionary role. See Ray, 343 U. S., at 228–229. Begin at the beginning—with the Nation’s first contested election in 1796. Would-be electors declared themselves for one or the other party’s presidential candidate. (Recall that