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

states from tyrannizing less populous states. The reliance on electoral votes rather than popular votes was a means to ensure that candidates would possess broad appeal across the country. Moreover, having electors simultaneously vote in their respective states would presumably reduce the opportunity for other electors or for various factions in the new republic to lobby electors to change their votes. Massachusetts delegate Rufus King surmised that “apportioning, limiting, and confining the electors within their respective states” would eliminate “intrigue, combination and corruption” and lead to the “free and pure election of the President of the United States” (King, 1824). In spite of these good intentions, however, a number of coordinated campaigns have been conducted—often out of the public eye—to influence electors to vote contrary to expectations.

The Constitution further dictates that each state may determine how electors are selected. State legislatures have granted political parties a great deal of control over the nomination of electors. Each political party or candidate submits a list of electors to each state’s election officials. Although most state statutes require that parties in the state choose their electors in the same fashion, parties in several states may and do choose their electors differently. Regardless of the selection method, one thing is clear—political parties dominate the nomination process.

Longley and Peirce posited that most electors are chosen “on the basis of their long service to their party, because of their financial donations to party or candidate, or out of a wish to have an ethnically or politically balanced elector slate” (1999, 104). Electors typically receive no financial compensation other than a modest per diem to pay for travel to and from the state capital. In addition to participating in the pomp and circumstance of casting electoral votes, many electors receive invitations to attend the inauguration of the incoming president. According to the responses I received from electors, this was an unanticipated benefit of their service.

The Electoral College consists of fifty-one individual meetings at which electors cast their votes in their respective states (and the District of Columbia). The Constitution specifies that the Electoral College should convene on the Monday following the second Wednesday of