[EL] Questions about the Electoral College and the Civil War

[Derek Muller]

Dear listserv members,

Recent discussions about the Electoral College caused me to revisit a
couple of longstanding questions I've had about the Electoral College and
events around the Civil War.

First, Abraham Lincoln received just 39.8% of the popular vote total (which
assuredly would have been smaller if South Carolina had held a popular
election rather than having its legislature choose electors). Lincoln
received zero recorded votes in several southern states (just like John
Fremont in 1856 and John Hale in 1852). But, of course, there weren't
state-printed ballots. Voters brought their own tickets to the polls. So,
was there literally not a single voter in these southern states who'd cast
a ballot for a slate of Republican or Free Soil electors? (I suppose
regionalism and a lack of party-building makes this possible.) Or did the
state simply refuse to count any stray ballots cast for such candidates?
I'm just interested in any historical research as to the total absence of
votes for Lincoln in the South in 1860.

Second, the Confederate Constitution is mostly a light edit of the original
Constitution with some pro-slavery additions and a few other changes. The
President and Vice President would be elected to one six-year term, and
term limited to that one term. But the Confederate Constitution preserved
the Electoral College. Jefferson Davis won unanimously in the only
election. But there were stray votes cast in the popular election held in
North Carolina for other candidates other than Davis. So, is there evidence
of why the Confederacy chose to preserve the Electoral College (which had
just failed these states' interests in the election of a
plurality-of-the-popular-vote candidate Lincoln)? Out of mere convenience
and default? And what happened in North Carolina?

Sorry for a listserv-wide email, but I haven't seen details about these
stories before, so I thought I'd ask here....

Best,

Derek

Derek T. Muller
Associate Professor of Law
Pepperdine University School of Law
24255 Pacific Coast Hwy
Malibu, CA 90263
+1 310-506-7058 <+13105067058>
SSRN: http://papers.ssrn.com/author=464341
Twitter: http://twitter.com/derektmuller
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