26 Facts About Presidential electors

The additional three electors come from the Twenty-third Amendment, ratified in 1961, providing that the district established pursuant to Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 as the seat of the federal government is entitled to the same number of electors as the least populous state.

The substitution of Presidential electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to the fewest objections.

The Presidential electors come directly from the people and them alone, for that purpose only, and for that time only.

Hamilton argued that Presidential electors meeting in the state capitals were able to have information unavailable to the general public, in a time before telecommunications.

Whoever received a majority of votes from the Presidential electors would become president, with the person receiving the second most votes becoming vice president.

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In spite of Hamilton's assertion that Presidential electors were to be chosen by mass election, initially, state legislatures chose the Presidential electors in most of the states.

The popular election for Presidential electors means the president and vice president are in effect chosen through indirect election by the citizens.

However, when Presidential electors were pledged to vote for a specific candidate, the slate of Presidential electors chosen by the state were no longer free agents, independent thinkers, or deliberative representatives.

Some state leaders began to adopt the strategy that the favorite partisan presidential candidate among the people in their state would have a much better chance if all of the electors selected by their state were sure to vote the same way—a "general ticket" of electors pledged to a party candidate.

Madison said that when the Constitution was written, all of its authors assumed individual Presidential electors would be elected in their districts, and it was inconceivable that a "general ticket" of Presidential electors dictated by a state would supplant the concept.

Currently, Maine and Nebraska use the district plan, with two at-large Presidential electors assigned to support the winner of the statewide popular vote.

In 1824, when there were six states in which Presidential electors were legislatively appointed, rather than popularly elected, the true national popular vote is uncertain.

Presidential electors hailed from South Carolina and was a slaveholder.

Since the 1824 election, the majority of states have chosen their presidential electors based on winner-take-all results in the statewide popular vote on Election Day.

The slate of Presidential electors that represent the winning ticket will vote for those two offices.

Many states require an elector to vote for the candidate to which the elector is pledged and, usually, the Presidential electors themselves do regardless but some "faithless Presidential electors" have voted for other candidates or refrained from voting.

In some states, the electors are nominated by voters in primaries the same way other presidential candidates are nominated.

The Presidential electors sometimes choose a secretary, often not an elector, to take the minutes of the meeting.

Ballot formats vary between the states: in New Jersey for example, the Presidential electors cast ballots by checking the name of the candidate on a pre-printed card; in North Carolina, the Presidential electors write the name of the candidate on a blank card.

Faithless Presidential electors are comparatively rare because Presidential electors are generally chosen among those who are already personally committed to a party and party's candidate.

Thirty-three states plus the District of Columbia have laws against faithless Presidential electors, which were first enforced after the 2016 election, where ten Presidential electors voted or attempted to vote contrary to their pledges.

Faithless electors have never changed the outcome of a U S election for president.

Under the Presidential electors Succession Act of 1947, the Speaker of the House would become acting president until either the House selects a president or the Senate selects a vice president.

In 1824, there were six states in which electors were legislatively appointed, rather than popularly elected, so it is uncertain what the national popular vote would have been if all presidential electors had been popularly elected.

Presidential electors called upon President Nixon to attempt to persuade undecided Republican senators to support the proposal.

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Newspapers like The New York Times saw President Carter's proposal at that time as "a modest surprise" because of the indication of Carter that he would be interested in only eliminating the Presidential electors but retaining the electoral vote system in a modified form.