Opinion of the Court
of voting, protection of voters, prevention of fraud and corrupt practices, counting of votes, duties of inspectors and canvassers, and making and publication of election returns.” Smiley, 285 U. S., at 366. In contrast, a simple up-or-down vote suffices to ratify an amendment to the Constitution. Providing consent to the purchase of land or electing Senators involves similarly straightforward exercises of authority. But fashioning regulations governing federal elections “unquestionably calls for the exercise of lawmaking authority.” Arizona State Legislature, 576 U. S., at 808, n. 17. And the exercise of such authority in the context of the Elections Clause is subject to the ordinary constraints on lawmaking in the state constitution.
In sum, our precedents have long rejected the view that legislative action under the Elections Clause is purely federal in character, governed only by restraints found in the Federal Constitution.
C
Addressing our decisions in Smiley and Hildebrant, both the legislative defendants and Justice Thomas concede that at least some state constitutional provisions can restrain a state legislature’s exercise of authority under the Elections Clause. But they read those cases to differentiate between procedural and substantive constraints. Brief for Petitioners 24; post, at 21–22 (opinion of Thomas, J.). Smiley, in their view, stands for the proposition that state constitutions may impose only procedural hoops through which legislatures must jump in crafting rules governing federal elections. This concededly “formalistic” approach views the Governor’s veto at issue in Smiley as one such procedural restraint. Tr. of Oral Arg. 62. But when it comes to substantive provisions, their argument goes, our precedents have nothing to say.
This argument adopts too cramped a view of our decision in Smiley. Chief Justice Hughes’s opinion for the Court
