The President of the United States is chosen by a group of electors, apportioned among the several states according to their respective populations. The President of the United States is the Head of state and Head of government of the United States and is the highest political official in United States by Elections for President and Vice President of the United States are The Electoral College consists of 538 popularly elected representatives who formally select the President and Vice President of the United States. A US state is any one of the fifty subnational entities of the United States of America that share Sovereignty with the federal government Electors today are elected in every state by popular vote, and in practice have since the 19th century almost always agreed in advance to vote for a particular candidate -- that is, they are said to have been pledged to that candidate. An election is a Decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual to hold formal office In the 20th century, however, several elections were contested by unpledged electors, who made no such promise to any candidate before the election. These anomalies largely arose over fissures within the Democratic Party over the issues of civil rights and segregation. The Democratic Party is one of two major Political parties in the United States, the other being the Republican Party.
The phenomenon should not be confused with that of faithless electors, who pledge their vote to a candidate before the election but ultimately vote for someone else. Faithless electors are members of the Electoral College who do not cast their electoral votes for the people they have pledged to vote for
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Constitutional background
When the United States Constitution was written, the Founding Fathers intended the Electoral College to be a truly deliberative body whose members would choose a President based on their own preferences. The Constitution of the United States of America is the supreme Law of the United States. The Founding Fathers of the United States are the Political leaders who signed the Declaration of Independence or otherwise participated in the They also left the method for selecting the electors for each state to the discretion of that state's legislature. Thus, the Constitution places no restriction on the behavior of the electors, and assumes that each is an independent agent.
While the electors in the first few U. S. presidential elections may have cast their votes along these lines, U. S. politics very quickly became dominated by strong political party organizations, and by the 1830s most states chose their electors by popular vote. A political party is a Political organization that seeks to attain and maintain political power within Government, usually by participating in electoral As a result, the electors who appeared on ballots were nominated by the state chapters of national parties with the understanding that they would cast their votes for their party's candidate if elected. This became such a given in Presidential elections that most states eventually stopped listing the names of the electors on ballots, listing the candidate to whom those electors were pledged instead.
Unpledged electors in the 20th century
After the American Civil War and Reconstruction, the Democratic Party gained an almost unbreakable dominance in the Southern United States, and the Republicans, associated with Abraham Lincoln and the Union cause, were correspondingly unelectable. Causes of the war See also Origins of the American Civil War, Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War The coexistence of a slave-owning South The Southern United States &mdashcommonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South &mdashconstitutes a large distinctive Abraham Lincoln (February 12 1809 &ndash April 15 1865 the sixteenth President of the United States, successfully led his country through its greatest internal During the American Civil War, the Union was a name used to refer to the federal government of the United States, which was supported by the twenty-three While the leaders of the Democratic Party in the South were in many aspects conservative, especially in regard to segregation and civil rights for African Americans, the nationwide Democratic party became increasingly liberal in early 20th century, a movement that accelerated with the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Conservatism is a term used to describe political philosophies that favour Tradition, where tradition refers to various religious cultural or nationally defined African Americans or Black Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa The twentieth century of the Common Era began on In several mid-20th century elections, Democrats put slates of unpledged electors on the ballots in several Southern states; in some cases they ran in opposition to electors pledged to the nationwide Democratic candidate, and in others they were the only Democratic electors that appeared on the ballot. The goal was to have electors who could act as kingmakers in a close election, extracting concessions that would favor conservative Southern Democrats in exchange for their votes. " Kingmaker " is a term originally applied to the activities of Richard Neville 16th Earl of Warwick during the Wars of the Roses in England.
1944 election
The first modern slates of unpledged electors were fielded in the 1944 election as a protest against FDR's New Deal and support for desegregation. The United States presidential election of 1944 took place while the United States was preoccupied with fighting World War II. The New Deal was the name that United States President Franklin D Desegregation is the process of ending Racial segregation, most commonly used in reference to the United States. In Texas, a splinter group of Democrats known as the Texas Regulars fielded a slate of electors not pledged to any candidate; a similar slate was on the ballot in South Carolina. Texas ( is a state geographically located in the South Central United States and is also known as the Lone Star State. The Texas Regulars was a group based in Texas which was formed in 1944 to deny Franklin D South Carolina ( is a state in the southern region ( Deep South) of the United States of America. Neither group met much success.
1956 election
In 1956, unpledged slates were on the ballot in Alabama (20,150 votes, 4. Please DO NOT flip the colors --> The United States presidential election of 1956 saw a popular Dwight D Alabama (formally the State of Alabama;) is a State located in the southern region of the United States of America. 1% of the vote), Louisiana (44,520 votes, 7. The State of Louisiana ( or, État de Louisiane, pronounced) is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America 2% of the vote and they won four parishes), Mississippi (42,266 votes, 17. The US state of Louisiana is divided into 64 parishes in the same way that 48 of the other states of the United States Mississippi ( is a state located in the Deep South of the United States 3% of the vote and they won seven counties) and South Carolina (88,509 votes, 29. A county of the United States is a local level of government created as a subdivision of a state by the state government or by the federal or territorial government as a subdivision 5% of the vote and 21 counties).
1960 election
The 1960 election was the only election that saw unpledged electors actually elected to the electoral college. The United States presidential election of 1960 marked the end of Dwight D In that year, a slate of eight unpledged electors in Mississippi won a plurality of the vote there (116,248 votes, or 39% of the total). In Alabama, the state Democratic party nominated a mixed slate of electors, five of whom were pledged to Democratic nominee John F. Kennedy and six of whom were unpledged; this slate won the election in that state. John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy (May 29 1917&ndashNovember 22 1963 often referred to by his initials JFK, was the thirty-fifth President of Louisiana's popular vote went to a slate of electors pledged to Kennedy, but a slate of unpledged electors on the ballot there won 169,572 votes (21% of the vote).
When the electoral college cast its vote, all of the unpledged electors cast their votes for conservative Democrat Harry F. Byrd for President and Strom Thurmond for Vice President. Harry Flood Byrd Sr ( June 10, 1887 – October 20, 1966) of Berryville in Clarke County Virginia was an American James Strom Thurmond ( December 5, 1902 – June 26, 2003) was an American politician who served as governor of South Carolina and They were joined by faithless Republican elector Henry D. Irwin, though Irwin cast his Vice Presidential vote for Barry Goldwater. Henry D Irwin was a Republican Presidential Elector (from Oklahoma) for the 1960 U Irwin had attempted to broker a coalition between the unpledged electors and other Republican electors, but to no avail: Kennedy won a majority of the electoral vote, though the odd situation with the mixed elector slate in Alabama makes it difficult to say that he won the popular vote.
1964 election and after
The last slate of unpledged electors to date was filed in Alabama in the 1964 election. Please DO NOT flip the colors -->The United States presidential election of 1964 was one of the most lopsided presidential elections in the history of the United States The slate was supported by Democratic Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, and the national Democratic nominee, Lyndon B. Johnson, did not appear on Alabama ballots. George Corley Wallace Jr (August 25 1919 September 13 1998 was a Democratic Governor of Alabama for four terms (1963-1967 1971-1979 and 1983-1987 and ran for The electors won 30. 6%, but the state was ultimately won by Republican Barry Goldwater.
Goldwater's victory in Alabama was a herald of a trend that would put an end to the practice of nominating unpledged electors. As a strategy, it had been largely ineffective, and southern conservatives, once loath to vote Republican, began doing so in increasing numbers. As such, the practice of nominating unpledged electors can be seen as a transitional phase between the Democrats' traditional hold on the south to the modern environment, where the area is a Republican stronghold.
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