Some States' New Electoral Vote and Ballot Laws Seriously Misguided

When I heard of the movement of some Democratic-controlled state legislatures to enact laws giving their presidential electoral votes to the candidate receiving the highest popular vote total nationwide I initially thought that it was relatively meaningless, considering that all states passing these laws had clearly gone for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election anyway...it would only have teeth if swing states like Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Michigan would go for it or if the states with more Republican leanings would go against their political instincts.  In other words, I initially concluded that giving one's own state's electoral votes to the popular winner needs most of the country to go along with it to be truly effective, something that simply is not going to happen.  However, a more recent development has been going on in some states as they have passed laws barring any presidential candidate from their ballots if they won't release their income tax returns.  The U.S. Supreme Court in the past has struck down such restrictive laws and I expect (hopefully) that they will again.  But in the meantime, an ugly scenario is being created by the mix of these two different laws.  Let me explain...

Take a look at California, by far the most populous state in the country, and which has both the law giving its massive amounts of electoral votes to the popular winner and that banning a candidate from its ballot who refuses to reveal his or her tax returns.  Then even though voters will be able to write in that candidate's name on their ballot, the effect will be to artificially drastically diminish his or her vote total...not just within California but also for the entire nation's popular vote tally.  And all these other states are by their own laws depending on the viability of that popular vote figure to determine their own electoral votes.  If the tax/ballot restriction movement isn't quashed by the courts, then I fear that Republican-controlled state legislatures would pass their own retaliatory laws having the effect of banning top Democratic candidates, using their own criteria in doing this. These two different laws simply do not mix...frankly, I wish neither of them had ever been considered in the first place...