Presidential Electors and the Electoral College: An Examination ...

and 2008 to understand these important yet unknown political actors. In addition to identifying presidential electors, I examine how they are selected and what they think about the Electoral College. Several unexpected phenomena emerged over the course of the study. In particular, I investigate the presence and degree of elector lobbying, mentioned earlier, and the commitment of presidential electors to their parties’ tickets. Reports of elector lobbying were widespread immediately following the 2000 election, but further inspection revealed that the phenomenon was not unique to the 2000 assemblage. Consequently, I examined this issue more closely in surveys of the 2004 and 2008 presidential electors, exploring political behavior that has gone virtually unnoticed by scholars of presidential politics. The practice of elector lobbying allows citizens an additional opportunity beyond the vote for a presidential ticket to affect the outcome of the presidential race. These lobbying campaigns occur outside the glare of media attention and are directed at an exclusive and presumably unlikely group of citizens—presidential electors.

Of critical importance is the degree to which an audience for voting infidelity exists among presidential electors. Drawing upon the behavior of past faithless electors enabled me to generate a theory on the motivations of potentially rogue electors. These motivations provide insights into why elector lobbying is not wasted effort, why some electors waver, and why most electors remain committed to their party tickets. This framework suggests that the probability of faithless electors’ surfacing has been and continues to be significant. Using the 2000, 2004, and 2008 presidential contests as case studies helps flesh out relevant issues for each election. Past faithless electors pointed to a diverse array of reasons for their behavior, reasons often related to events specific to that particular presidential contest. Therefore, I treat each of these contests individually in order to gain a more complete picture of the whole. Working through the inductive process can be quite helpful in constructing a theory in an area that is data poor.

As already mentioned, findings from the 2000 survey suggest that the hunt for faithless electors was not conducted wholly in vain. Survey questions from 2004 and 2008 allowed me to more fully explore the potential