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FAITHLESS ELECTORS

© John S. Cooper

But the next instance was definitely a “faithless Elector.” In 1820, James Monroe carried every state in the Union in his successful re-election campaign. One Elector, named Plummer, in New Hampshire voted for Monroe’s Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams. Again, there is some uncertainty about Plummer’s motives. The most accepted story is that Plummer, a former governor of his state, so revered George Washington that he did not wish anyone else to be remembered by history as having equaled Washington’s unanimous election. Another version is that Plummer grew dissatisfied with Monroe’s policies and voted for Adams in protest.

There were no further faithless Electors until 1948 when Preston Parks, a Truman Elector in Tennessee, voted for Governor Strom Thurmond who was running for President on the Dixiecrat ticket. That is the same Strom Thurmond who has been a Senator from South Carolina since 1955, and is now the President Pro Tempore of the Senate.

In 1956, W.F. Turner, who had been elected as a Stevenson (Democratic) Elector voted instead for Walter E. Jones, a local judge. By the time he cast his vote for Jones, Turner knew that his candidate had lost the election, and that his vote would not make a difference in the outcome.

In the close 1960 presidential race, a Nixon Elector named Henry D. Irwin of Oklahoma changed his vote to Harry F. Byrd, a Senator from Virginia. Byrd had run as an independent, and gained votes in the South where the southern Democrats did not agree with Kennedy’s civil rights position. Byrd won all of Mississippi’s eight electoral votes, six of Alabama’s eleven electoral votes, and the one from the faithless elector in Oklahoma. Again, it was not enough to change the results, but it did make an already tight election even closer.

In 1968, Dr. Lloyd Bailey, a Nixon Elector from North Carolina, cast his vote for American Independent Party candidate George C. Wallace. Wallace carried five Deep South states that year, plus this one vote from North Carolina for a total of 46 electoral votes. Wallace came very close to denying either of the two major candidates (Nixon and Humphrey) an electoral majority and thus throwing the election into the House of Representatives. Wallace hoped that by doing so, he would have the balance of power in choosing the next President and thus be able to extract concessions from one or both of the candidates.

In 1972, Roger L. MacBride voted for the Libertarian Party candidate, John Hospers. MacBride had been elected as a Nixon Elector in Virginia. After receiving a great deal of publicity, MacBride ran for President as a Libertarian in 1976.