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When the USA votes for a president, voters technically vote for the electoral college. But as far as I know, all ballots show the name of the presidential candidates.

In the 1789 presidential election, in states that used voting, voters literally voted for the electors: Washington's name was not on the ballot. (My source: "The election of George Washington was weirder than you think" by Youtuber Premodernist)

I'm curious: when did this change?

I tried to investigate myself by Googling for pictures of ballots, but found very little (1940 had presidential candidates on the ballots, but I expect the change to have happened much earlier), and I don't really know how to investigate this otherwise...

MCW
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user132647
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  • Good job; surprisingly interesting question. – MCW Aug 31 '23 at 12:37
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    Does this answer your question? History of ways of choosing members of the electoral college – Pieter Geerkens Aug 31 '23 at 12:51
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    United States Electoral College seems to have the answer, but it's complicated, not least because it depends on the state. For example, even in the 2020 election, some states have voters write the name on the ballot paper (e.g. North Carolina) as the candidates names are not printed there. – Lars Bosteen Aug 31 '23 at 13:33
  • @PieterGeerkens: no, that question is about different methods of selecting electors. My question is about different methods for doing a popular vote. – user132647 Aug 31 '23 at 13:52
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    @LarsBosteen: I don't find the answer on that page. And in 2020 everybody selected a presidential candidate (wether by selecting a box or writing a name), nobody selected the name of a member of the electoral college. – user132647 Aug 31 '23 at 13:54
  • @LarsBosteen, Would that be because elections are held by the state, not by the Federal government? – MCW Aug 31 '23 at 13:59
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    @LarsBosteen - Well, trying to explain the complicated is kind of our thing. – T.E.D. Aug 31 '23 at 13:59
  • @PieterGeerkens - Given that question only has one answer, and that one is not much better than a bare link for the purposes of this question, I don't see how. However, its link could well be useful in this matter. – T.E.D. Aug 31 '23 at 14:02
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    I already expected that it would be complicated, but I was hoping for an answer like "The first time that a state used presidential candidates' names on a ballot was in 18xx, and the last time that a state used electoral college candidates' names on a ballot was in 18xx, and the years in between were a chaos." – user132647 Aug 31 '23 at 14:03
  • Having been a candidate for elector (in Texas), I'm pretty sure that the rules are set by state. When I got the job, I did some research. I think I found at least one state (a very small one) where the elector candidates did show up on the ballot. In Texas, the statute simply says The names of presidential elector candidates may not be placed on the ballot. (https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/EL/htm/EL.192.htmhttps://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/EL/htm/EL.192.htm). Remember, there are no Federal elections in the US. There are 51 separate presidential elections (the states + DC) – Flydog57 Aug 31 '23 at 22:42
  • @T.E.D.: Agreed on both counts. I've no longer got a dog in that fight; and perhaps have saved some research time by others. – Pieter Geerkens Aug 31 '23 at 23:57
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    @user132647 I'm fairly certain I've seen electors' names appear on a ballot more recently than 18xx but can't find it. – Azor Ahai -him- Sep 03 '23 at 03:50

1 Answers1

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It looks like it might have first happened in the election of 1804. However, this answer may not mean quite what you think it means.

One problem with answering simple questions about the quadrennial US Presidential election, is that effectively there is no such thing. Its kind of a polite fiction. Instead, there are 51 separate elections that (mostly by tradition) are all held on the same day. Each state runs its own election, by its own rules. These elections technically only appoint "electors" to the real election.

While the Constitution is fairly explicit on how things work from the Electoral College onward, the limits the US Constitution places on these state elections are surprisingly minimal. If a state wishes to simply have its governor or state legislature appoint the electors and have no popular vote whatsoever, that's their right. Of course that would be cartoonishly undemocratic, so no state has done that since the end of the Civil War. But the point is, the rules are entirely up to the states, and as long as the states follow their own rules (and don't do anything unconstitutional with any vote they do have), nobody outside that state really has a say in what they are.

The original idea was that, rather than a direct election, states would send their wisest men to the Electoral College. This was pictured as a body similar to the Vatican's College of Cardinals: They would get together in a proverbial smoke-filled room1 and decide who would make the best president. Every elector got 2 votes, and the top 2 choices, if they got more than ¼ of the votes and didn't tie, became POTUS and VPOTUS. There are rules after that for how the votes fall back into Congress, and it was kind of expected that would happen a lot, due to there being lots of regional candidates and none of those evil nationwide political parties like the British Parliament was afflicted with.

The system worked mostly as expected for the first couple of elections, because George Washington was so popular there wasn't much thought of selecting anyone else. For both elections, only Maryland and Pennsylvania had popular votes for electors. It seems like the choice for voters there was how "Federalist" their elector was, which would perhaps impact their Vice Presidential choice.

However, we can see with the very next election that it wasn't working anymore. There were in fact political parties, and faithfully following the system meant the VP was from a competing party, which has all sorts of obvious practical problems. The solution to this was to make sure to send electors who would promise to spend both votes on the preferred party's two candidates. This exposed a "bug" where if at least one elector didn't vote for a different VP candidate, the top 2 candidates tied2, sending the election to Congress.

That bug got patched with the 12th Amendment, which made VP and POTUS different votes in the Electoral College. Arguably, this normalized the behavior of electors being rubber stamps for particular parties, by incorporating that process into the Constitution. The first election run under this new system was the election of 1804.

Of course the electors as designed were supposed to be exercising independent judgement, and there appears to have been a bit of resistance to just flat out replacing their names on the ballots (in states that had ballots).

Supreme Court Justice Storey in 1833 summarized the existing situation thusly:

It is notorious, that the electors are now chosen wholly with reference to particular candidates, and are silently pledged to vote for them. Nay, upon some occasions the electors publicly pledge themselves to vote for a particular person; and thus, in effect, the whole foundation of the system, so elaborately constructed, is subverted. The candidates for the presidency are selected and announced in each state long before the election; and an ardent canvass is maintained in the newspapers, in party meetings, and in the state legislatures, to secure votes for the favourite candidate, and to defeat his opponents. Nay, the state legislatures often become the nominating body, acting in their official capacities, and recommending by solemn resolves their own candidate to the other states. So, that nothing is left to the electors after their choice, but to register votes, which are already pledged; and an exercise of an independent judgment would be treated, as a political usurpation, dishonourable to the individual, and a fraud upon his constituents.

As for what was on the actual ballots, I'll do my best here. It looks like the 1796 Maryland ballot just had Elector names. Here's an image I dug up of a tally for one district:

Maryland 1796 presidential ballot totals for district 8

The next 2 elections for that same district also tallied by elector names, but the 1804 election did not:

Maryland 1804 presidential ballot totals for district 8

New Jersey that year put both pieces of information on their returns: New Jersey 1804 Returns for Presidential Elections

Pennsylvania's return for that year is organized in the same way. All the other states that had a popular election and an archived copy of the actual results listed only by elector name. Of course there were only 8 states with a popular vote that year.

I then back-poked through the previous elector ballot records of all the states that had them, thanks to a really handy website at Tufts, and most every state had electors named on their archived actual archived election results3. However, there were a few states that they didn't have archived hardcopies to look at, and of course many states were still not having a popular election at all.

So its conceivable some state may have done it earlier, and we just don't have a record for it. 1804 is just the earliest I can find doing it for sure. Based on that also being the first election year after the Constitution was changed to accommodate mass use of pledged electors, 1804 seems like a good touchtone year.

1 - Technically 51 smoke-filled rooms; one for each state.

2 - In a way, it was this bug that ultimately led to the death of Alexander Hamilton.

3 - Endearingly, many appear to have been hand-written, in cursive

T.E.D.
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    In case anyone else notices this, Maryland mentions a "Washington" with some votes on both ballots. I belive that is not votes for the DC area (which famously was not able to vote at that time, and was no longer part of Maryland), but rather for Washington County, which is up in the western panhandle, directly south of Pennsylvania. The county was so-named in 1776, so it did exist by that name at the time. – T.E.D. Aug 31 '23 at 22:15
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    The date of the Presidential (and other elections) is set by federal statute, not mostly by tradition: 2 U.S. Code § 7: The Tuesday next after the 1st Monday in November, in every even numbered year, is established as the day for the election, in each of the States and Territories of the United States, of Representatives and Delegates to the Congress commencing on the 3d day of January next thereafter. – Flydog57 Aug 31 '23 at 22:45
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    @Flydog57 - Not exactly. Code 2 is laws regulating Congress (and chapter 7 is laws for contested elections. So that law only applies to Congressional Elections. However, its probably a fair point that this effectively sets the day for any Presidential General Election, since running a statewide general election is super expensive, so it would be a wasteful use of taxpayer $ to do two of them when you don't need to. (You can also see that it isn't talking about Presidential elections because some of the language wouldn't make sense for one, eg: "Every 2 years".) – T.E.D. Sep 01 '23 at 01:25
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    Still, I could see Hawai'i in particular paying to run theirs a day early (and then have the Senate/House elections the next day with everyone else. They are a bit sore about not getting to vote until the election is almost certainly decided due to the time zone difference, so it might be worth the money to them. And of course nothing's stopping Congress from changing the law a bit to help them out either. – T.E.D. Sep 01 '23 at 01:30
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    @T.E.D.: They could maybe run it early, but they cannot run it late, because 3 USC 1 requires electors to be "appointed [...] on election day," which is then defined in the usual manner (i.e. as the election day in November, not the one in December when the actual election happens). Although the appointment nominally happens "on election day," the state only has to "ascertain" the electors six days before the December election. – Kevin Sep 01 '23 at 03:09
  • Thank you so much for this excellent answer. – user132647 Sep 01 '23 at 08:38
  • @Kevin - Theoretically a state could just "hire" electors, submit their names on the date required, and then not tell them who they are pledged to vote for until December (presumably after their general election on a later non-standard date). However, that seems dangerous, as its still not clear that laws against "unfaithful electors" are constitutional, and even if they aren't an elector could decide its worth the punishment. – T.E.D. Sep 01 '23 at 13:07
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    @T.E.D. The Supreme Court decided in 2020 in Chiafalo v. Washington that laws against unfaithful electors were in fact Constitutional. – A. R. Sep 01 '23 at 13:29
  • @A.R. - I'd like to think that holds, but SCOTUS has never shown itself to be super consistent in matters relating to which party holds the presidency, the current YOLOSCOTUS hasn't shown any reverence for precedent whatsoever (so every decision it makes basically has an asterix on it), and as I said nothing's stopping an elector from just deciding to take the punishment and vote the way they want anyway. – T.E.D. Sep 01 '23 at 13:39
  • @T.E.D. Then you have to allow that it's not clear that anything is or is not Constitutional, which makes the whole concept meaningless. This decision was made by pretty much the current SCOTUS, except that Breyer, J was replaced with Jackson, J. – A. R. Sep 01 '23 at 13:49
  • @A.R. - You aren't the first person to make that point, which is how they earned the moniker YOLO SCOTUS. All that is probably beyond the scope of this question though. – T.E.D. Sep 01 '23 at 14:09
  • "Technically 51 smoke-filled rooms; one for each state": surely the original idea was more along the lines of 13 smoke-filled rooms. "many appear to have been hand-written, in cursive": the typewriter did not exist for the first 20 or so elections. It came into common use in the late 1880s. – phoog Sep 03 '23 at 07:50
  • @phoog - I was wondering about that with the typewriter. That means the ones that look typewritten are in fact not originals. – T.E.D. Sep 03 '23 at 13:59