Definition
A person legally qualified to vote in a public election. The term carries two distinct legal meanings that operate at different levels of the political system:
1. General elector (voter). Any person who meets the legal qualifications to cast a vote in a public election — for candidates for office, ballot measures, or other public questions. In this sense, elector and voter are synonymous in American law, though elector carries a slightly more formal register and appears more frequently in constitutional and statutory texts.
2. Presidential elector. A person formally chosen — under state law and pursuant to Article II of the U.S. Constitution — to cast an official vote for President and Vice President of the United States as a member of the Electoral College. Presidential electors are selected through a state-by-state popular vote process and meet in their respective states to cast their votes after the general election. The number of presidential electors allocated to each state equals its total congressional representation (House seats plus two Senate seats).
A third, now-historical meaning: in the old German Empire, Elector (Kurfürst) was the title borne by certain princes of the Holy Roman Empire who held the right to choose the Emperor. This meaning is obsolete in legal contexts but appears throughout historical legal dictionaries without differentiation from the modern electoral sense — a trap for the inattentive researcher.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A person eligible to vote in an election; a member of an electorate. Also, specifically, a member of an electoral college.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): One who elects, or has the right of choice; a person entitled to take part in an election or to give his vote in favor of a candidate for office. Also, in the old German Empire, one of the princes entitled to choose the Emperor.
The common and legal meanings largely overlap for the general voter sense, so no significant gap exists there. The gap that matters for researchers is internal to legal usage: the word elector can mean any qualified voter or, specifically, a presidential elector — a far more restricted and structurally significant role. Context almost always resolves which meaning applies, but constitutional and statutory texts must be read carefully. A state statute referring to "qualified electors" means ordinary voters; a constitutional provision about "Electors" meeting in state capitals means members of the Electoral College.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
General elector. Any qualified voter in any public election at the local, state, or federal level. This is the broadest and most common usage.
Presidential elector. A member of the Electoral College. Chosen by popular vote on a state-by-state basis, presidential electors formally elect the President and Vice President. Their legal status — including whether they may vote contrary to the popular outcome in their state (so-called "faithless electors") — has been a subject of significant constitutional litigation.
Historical (German) Elector. A prince of the Holy Roman Empire with the right to participate in imperial elections. Purely historical; retained in legal dictionaries for completeness but without modern legal application.
Why It Matters in Research
The critical research hazard is the false equivalence across the historical dictionaries. Black's (1st ed.), Bouvier's, and Rapalje & Lawrence all define elector primarily as any voter and then append the German prince meaning without clearly distinguishing it from the American constitutional meaning of presidential elector. Researchers working in 18th- and 19th-century primary sources — constitutional debates, early statutes, contemporaneous commentary — need to pay close attention to which sense is operative. The Founders used Elector in the presidential sense quite deliberately, and the capitalization convention (Electors vs. electors) in original constitutional texts is a meaningful signal, not stylistic variation.
The faithless elector question dramatically sharpened the legal significance of the presidential elector subtype in the early 21st century. Research into the legal obligations of presidential electors — whether they are bound by state pledge laws, whether those laws are constitutional — requires distinguishing between pre- and post-2020 source material. The Supreme Court's decision in Chiafalo v. Washington (2020) resolved that states may enforce laws binding presidential electors to the popular vote outcome, settling a long-disputed question. Sources predating that decision may treat elector discretion as an open or answered question in the opposite direction.
Jurisdictional variation on voter qualification standards (age, residency, citizenship, registration) directly affects who qualifies as an elector in the general sense. Researchers using the term in state constitutional or statutory contexts must account for state-specific qualification regimes, which have changed substantially over time — particularly through the 15th, 19th, 24th, and 26th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
The note in Rapalje & Lawrence about electors being synonymous with voters in criminal law contexts (citing State v. Tuttle) reflects a practical concern: indictments and jury-selection statutes of the 19th century frequently used elector as a qualification term. Researchers examining jury composition history or suffrage-related criminal matters should treat elector as a term of art pointing toward the franchise qualifications in force at the relevant time and place.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical sources are in agreement on the core definition — one who has a vote in the choice of any officer — and on preserving the German imperial usage as a secondary meaning. Bouvier adds the right-to-vote framing and cites a Minnesota case for support. Black's 2nd ed. refines the definition slightly to "duly qualified voter," an improvement that shifts the emphasis from the abstract right to vote to the legally operative status of being qualified.
None of the historical sources adequately develops the presidential elector as a distinct legal category meriting separate treatment. The fragment in Black's 2nd ed. — "Electors of president. [Persons chosen by the people at a..." — appears to begin a sub-entry but is truncated in the available text. This gap is significant: by the time these dictionaries were in wide use, the Electoral College was already a well-established constitutional institution with its own body of interpretive controversy, yet the historical dictionaries treat it almost as a footnote to the general definition.
Rapalje & Lawrence's cross-reference into criminal law (indictment election among counts) is an outlier and appears to be an editorial artifact — the entry jumps from defining elector to a procedural criminal law note with no clear connective tissue. Researchers should not read substantive legal significance into that juxtaposition.
Jurisdictional Note
Voter qualification requirements — and thus who qualifies as a general elector — vary by state within the limits set by federal constitutional amendments and the Voting Rights Act. For presidential electors specifically, states differ in whether and how they enforce elector pledge laws following Chiafalo, making jurisdiction essential context for any research touching Electoral College mechanics.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Electoral College — Constitutional Design and Reform Proposals (Law Mind Constitutional Law Encyclopedia) — covers the constitutional structure governing presidential electors, the historical development of the Electoral College, and reform debates including the faithless elector question.