Editing Unpledged elector (section)

==Constitutional background==
When the [[United States Constitution]] was written, the [[Founding Fathers of the United States|Founding Fathers]] intended the Electoral College to be a truly deliberative body whose members would choose a president ([[Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution|and vice president, after 1800]]) based on their own preferences.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Kimberling|first1=William C.|title=The Electoral College|url=http://uselectionatlas.org/INFORMATION/INFORMATION/electcollege_history.php|website=Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections|access-date=12 November 2016}}</ref> They also left the method for selecting the electors for each state to the discretion of that state's legislature. Other than the implied expectation that the electors vote for candidates who are constitutionally qualified to serve as president and vice president, the Constitution otherwise places no restriction on the behavior of the electors, and assumes that each is an independent agent.

The system worked without much controversy for the first two presidential elections in which [[George Washington]] was the unanimous choice for president and electors' opinions diverged only on the choice for vice president, which was widely seen to be an unimportant post.<ref>The precedent that a vice president would be permitted to complete the term of a deceased president would not be established until after a president had died in office, which did not occur until 1841.</ref> Washington was not a member of any political party, and had hoped they would not form. Nevertheless, "Federalist" and "Anti-Federalist" factions quickly coalesced in the [[United States Congress]].

Once Washington announced his intention to retire after his second presidential term, U.S. politics very quickly became dominated by strong [[political party]] organizations. Even without this particular development, the reality was that electors had only one constitutional duty – electing the president and vice president, while at the same time seeking no other federal office since federal officials are constitutionally barred from serving as electors. In several states, legislatures chose electors. Among the states that selected electors by popular vote, different electoral systems were in place. Some effectively held a statewide vote for all electors – essentially the system most similar to that used in 48 of 50 states today although at this time an electoral mechanism that could effectively compel voters to vote for any particular "slate" of presidential electors had not yet been contemplated. Some states elected two electors in a statewide vote and one in each congressional district (essentially, the system used today in Maine and Nebraska) and a few states experimented with selecting presidential electors in special districts distinct from its congressional districts. More broadly, the franchise (that is, the qualifications that determined who among the adult male population was allowed to vote for state and federal legislators and, where applicable, for presidential electors) varied widely from state to state. However, no matter who was allowed to vote for electors and no matter how they were selected, the only meaningful question any prospective elector had to answer was for whom they would vote for president (and, from 1804 onward, for vice president) and the only real issues of importance to those selecting electors, beyond deciding who they wanted to become president and vice president, was perhaps whether the person or people they selected to represent them in the Electoral College could be trusted to keep their word. Thus, it rapidly became increasingly unrealistic for anyone to be elected to the Electoral College without making a trustworthy "pledge" to vote for particular candidates on behalf of those electing them.

By the 1830s, most states chose their electors by popular vote.  While voting for individual electors was still the norm at this point, by this time 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. Also by this time, political parties had successfully lobbied most states to allow voters to cast one vote for every elector that state had apportioned to it. The main rationale of this system was to greatly simplify the distribution of presidential ballots. Prior to the introduction of the [[secret ballot]], political parties were responsible for printing and distributing their own ballots, thus, allowing voters to cast as many votes as the state had electors meant a party could print a standardized ballot containing the same slate of the party's presidential electors for each state. Also, whether an intended consequence or not, this system resulted in most states having a ''[[de facto]]'' (but not ''[[de jure]]'') [[Winner-takes-all voting|winner-take-all]] method of allocating presidential electors.

Eventually, this arrangement became such a given in presidential elections that when the time came for the states to take over the printing and distribution of ballots (a development necessitated by the introduction of the secret ballot in the 1880s) most states did not bother to list the names of the electors on ballots, instead listing the candidates to whom those electors were pledged. In doing so, they also ensured that the winner-take-all method of selecting presidential electors that had become so firmly entrenched in the U.S. presidential electoral system by that point would become established by law in most states. There were some exceptions, however, such as [[Alabama]], described below.