"The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators."
Basically congress can outlaw such behavior without an ammendment, but they never have or never were willing to do so.
Article 1 is for the Legislative Branch, the OP is specifically talking about the Electoral College which is covered by Article 2 for the Executive Branch. You are correct that for senators and representatives Congress can pass a regular law, because they are regulating themself. They cannot do so in regards to regulating the Executive Branch, requiring a Constitutional amendment for that is part of the system of checks and balances at the heart of how our federal government is structured.
What do you think electoral districts are? They are the same districts as the congressional ones. Also, remember congressional and presidential elections are held at the same time.
That is done for convenience, it is not a federal requirement that the same ballot be used to vote for both the president and congress or that the same districts are used. The only requirement is that the state sends the same number of electors as they have members of congress, how they decide that is up to them. It would be wildly impractical to hold two simultaneous elections with different district maps, but there’s nothing legally stopping them from doing so if they wanted to.
Actually the federal congress gets to decide when the presidential elections are held, so they would have to separate them on purpose. States cannot change that, thus as it is currently illegal attempting to discriminate against certain peoples in a congressional election it could be unconstitutional. If the federal government separated the two out then yes, they might be able to discriminate.
And any laws congress makes regarding congressional elec5ions also have to be followed.
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u/WatchItAllBurn1 May 27 '23
1st of all, it is article 1 section 4 clause 1
Basically congress can outlaw such behavior without an ammendment, but they never have or never were willing to do so.