Special to the Chronicle
The US Supreme Court stood up for voters and robo-call sufferers this week.
The court majority ruled robo-calls are illegal and Electoral College electors must vote the way the majority voted in their states.
The court blocked the use of robo-calls to collect government-backed debt, closing an exception Congress enacted in 2015 to a decades-old ban on unwanted cellphone-dialing.
“Americans passionately disagree about many things. But they are largely united in their disdain for robocalls,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the ruling.
Congress banned most robo-calls in 1991 but in 2015 added the exception for debt collectors working on government-backed loans. 
On the Electoral College, a unanimous court ruled presidential electors must cast ballots for the candidate who wins their state’s popular vote.
In an opinion by Justice Elena Kagan, the justices said that states stand on firm constitutional and historical ground in requiring that presidential electors must stick with the state’s voter-chosen candidate.
In 2016, several Democratic electors tried a last-minute maneuver to deny Donald Trump a victory. 
10 of the 538 electors tried to cast ballots for a presidential candidate other than the one selected by their state’s voters, hoping enough Republican electors would follow suit that the outcome would be thrown to the House of Representatives, where a compromise candidate might win.
Their strategy failed.