I don't know who the electors voted for. What I do know is that the electors in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina were elected by electoral district.
Thank you for that information.
In Maryland, Jefferson carried 3 districts. It is reasonable to infer that the 3 electors voted for Jefferson and Burr, since we know that there must have been one Jefferson and Adams elector (one district had a 1344-1340 margin for the Federalist elector, so we might at least wishfully attribute the split vote to this elector from the 4th district (western Maryland beyond Frederick County). This means that the 7 Adams electors split (4 Thomas Pinckney, 2 Patrick Henry, and 1 Thomas Jefferson).
That does make the most sense, and is what I had expected probably was the case even though I wasn't sure. John (not Patrick) Henry of Maryland is listed as a Democratic-Republican, but it would make more sense for a Federalist elector to vote for him than for Aaron Burr whom all electors must have known was a leading choice of the Democratic-Republican electors for Vice President.
In Virginia, it might be possible that a Federalist elector carried one district (no returns were located) and voted for Adams and Pinckney. The problem with this is that George Washington received one electoral vote. An elector from Virginia could not legally vote for both Jefferson and Washington. So possibly, like in Maryland, there was one elector who voted for Jefferson and Adams. This would mean that like in Pennsylvania, there was also a Jefferson and Pinckney elector. This would split the second for the 20 Jefferson votes (as Samuel Adams 15, John Adams 1, Thomas Pinckney 1, George Clinton 3).
If one elector from Virginia voted for both Jefferson and Adams, than that would mean one elector from Virginia must have voted for neither Jefferson nor John Adams, since Jefferson and John Adams combined to receive 21 electoral votes which was the number of electors from Virginia. If any presidential elector had not voted for either of those two major Presidential candidates in that election, I'm pretty sure it would have been well recorded and that it would be noted on any detailed history of early U.S. Presidential elections, and I have never heard anything about an elector not voting for either of those two candidates. So I'm almost entirely sure that each elector from Virginia voted for either John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, but not both, and one additional candidate. And since, as you pointed out, an elector from Virginia could not have voted for both Jefferson and Washington, the elector who voted for Washington must have been the same elector who voted for John Adams. Since all eight of South Carolina's electors voted for both Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Pinckney, it does not seem outlandish that one of Virginia's electors did the same. And the south was the region of the country where Hamilton was hoping enough electors would vote for Pinckney but not Adams that Pinckney would be elected President. So, thanks for helping me fairly conclusively answer my question relating to Virginia.
In North Carolina, the simplest assumption is that one elector voted for Adams and Pinckney. This would split the 2nd vote for the 11 Jefferson electors as (Burr 6, James Iredell 3, Charles Pinckney 1, and George Washington 1). It would have been legal for a North Carolina elector to vote for Jefferson and Washington.
Your assumption is definitely plausible, but here there is certainly at least one other reasonable posibility - that the elector who voted for John Adams also voted for George Washington, as most likely happened in Virginia. Also, Charles Pinckney, who four years later would be Adams' running-mate, could have received the second vote of the Adams elector. The elector who voted for Thomas Pinckney could have been a Jefferson elector, like the eight electors from South Carolina and, I believe now, one from Virginia. So I remain unsure as to the answer to my question regarding North Carolina, although I imagine that the 6 and 3 electors who voted for Aaron Burr and James Irdell respectively voted for the same other candidate, which in each case would have to have been Thomas Jefferson. Because of the regional pattern and since there was a precendent for electors to vote for George Washington and John Adams, I am leaning towards one elector from North Carolina voting for those two candidates.
Thank you for giving each of these questions (except for the one about Pennsylvania, which hardly needed to be asked in the first place), especially for the tip about the impossibility of a Washington-Jefferson elector from Virginia.
Sincerely,
Kevin Lamoreau
