ok. but how did the people in the Southern state know they could vote for Unpledged Electors? The vote was high in some of the states. So, I guess someone got the word out that that's what u could do for that election.
As you know each state chooses presidential electors, who in turn will vote for the President (and Vice President). Originally, electors were chosen as individuals, just like a congressman. But they quickly became identified with presidential candidates, and would run as a supporter of the candidate. Since their only job was to vote for the President and Vice President, that in effect became their platform.
Later, parties became more organized, and electors would in effect run on a platform of voting for the presidential candidate of their party. But they were often identified as individuals running for the office of presidential elector. In some states, electors would run as a slate, but voters would still vote for individual electors. If a state had eleven electoral votes, a voter could vote for 11 individual electors. In occasional close elections, this could result in a split vote, as some voters might decide to not vote for a particular elector of one party, or vote for a well-known elector candidate of another party.
It was consistent with the election of everyone else on the ballot to have elector candidates run as individuals, and avoided having to have special election laws dealing specifically with presidential electors. Political parties, and state legislators elected with the support of the parties would seek to change the election laws to increase their influence and control. So they would change the election laws so that candidates ran on party slates, and as much as possible chosen by the party bosses.
If it suited their purposes to have presidential electors run as anonymous automatons under the name of the presidential candidate, they would change the laws to that effect. If the presidential candidate would draw voters to their party, they would be more inclined to want his name on the ballot.
In the South, it might not be that helpful to have the presidential candidate at the top of the Democratic ballot, and it have a negative impact to have the Republican candidate on the top of the ballot. In most Southern states, the Democratic primary determined who was elected. Most if not all elections were uncontested in the general election. Turnout was much higher for the primary than the general election. If Eisenhower were on the top of the ballot, some voters might vote for Republican congressmen as well.
So the election laws may simply have provided for elector candidates. People were accustomed to each party having elector candidates, but it was also possible to have them run as independents.
The elector candidates running on the Democratic party line were not necessarily pledged either. For example, see Alabama in 1960. The Democratic electors were chosen in the Democratic primary. Some candidates in the primary had said they would support the candidate chosen by the national convention, others had said they weren't ready to commit. It ended up with a split slate of selectors. In November, voters could vote for the "Democratic" electors or the "Republican" electors. The "Democratic" electors won, and the individual electors in December then cast their votes for either JFK or Robert Byrd.
