Unpledged Elector - Constitutional Background

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. 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. 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.