(CNN) — Frodo Baggins is now forever part of the Supreme Court’s historical record.
In a line of hypothetical questioning during oral arguments Wednesday on the Electoral College, Justice Clarence Thomas brought up the hobbit from the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.
Thomas has drawn attention over the past two weeks for asking more questions during oral arguments using the court’s pandemic-prompted telephone system than he has asked for more than a decade in the courtroom. On Wednesday, when posing a hypothetical to Jason Harrow, representing a so-called faithless elector from Colorado, the newly loquacious justice brought up Baggins.
The case concerns whether states can bind presidential electors to vote for the state’s popular-vote winner.
Harrow was making the argument that electors are best placed to make the ultimate decision for whom to cast their vote.
Thomas challenged that view: “The elector who had promised to vote for the winning candidate could suddenly say, ‘You know, I’m going to vote for Frodo Baggins. I really like Frodo Baggins.’ And you’re saying, under your system, you can’t do anything about that.”
Harrow wasn’t buying the scenario. “Your honor, I think there is something to be done,” he said, “because that would be a vote for a non-person. No matter how big a fan many people are of Frodo Baggins.”
Baggins was once more invoked during closing rebuttal by opposing counsel, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, who was defending the state’s move to replace the elector who attempted to vote for someone other than Hillary Clinton, who won Colorado, after the 2016 presidential election.
“My friends on the other side have failed to offer any viable theory on how to address the spectacle of a bribed elector, an elector who votes for Frodo Baggins, or one who would perpetrate a bait-and-switch on the people of the state,” Weiser said.
At the end of the day’s arguments, several court observers said the justices seemed poised to hold that states can bind the electors’ votes, requiring them to follow the popular vote.
In 2016, 10 of the 538 presidential electors went rogue, attempting to vote for someone other than their pledged candidate.The-CNN-Wire
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