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Archive 1

What does "popular vote, unknown" mean? There was no popular vote. Adam 04:03, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

There was a popular vote in the election of 1788-1789. However, the results were not tabulated until the end of the twentieth century. Phil Lampi of the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester MA went to the archives of the earliest states and collected the information on the popular vote for presidential elections before 1824. Washington received 38,818 votes, including 2,952 votes on anti-federalist slates of Presidential Electors in PA and MD. The results are given here: http://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=59542 Chronicler3 13:35, 8 February 2006 (UTC)Chronicler3

I believe that the footnote on the popular vote misses the point. The same footnote could be used for all presidential elections until the Civil War in terms of not all states choosing Electors by popular vote or restrictions on the right to vote. For that matter, some states restricted the vote until 1964.

If the popular vote of 1789-1820 is "suspect," it should strictly be the result of incomplete or disputed results. Michael J. Dubin's recent book United States Presidential Elections 1788-1860 gives the popular vote breakdown by county for these elections. This is a key work in terms of providing this information, which four researchers have recently investigated in various states. In several cases, Dubin's information differs from that collected by Phil Lampi of the American Antiquarian Society. I have also found instances where Dubin missed some information (OH 1804 and 1808, NC 1820) or has misattributions (NC 1816). Mistakes happen in any type of work of this nature. Most of Dubin's information is sourced, but not all (contact me if you want to know more about this because he disputes it). By the way, at www.ourcapaigns.com, I have entered the sources of the vote in each state's race. To me, the question is this: how accurate is this information?

It seems to me that a more precise footnote would be something along these lines: The popular vote for this year is derived from late twentieth century research primarily by Phil Lampi and Michael J. Dubin. The vote of several states choosing Electors by popular vote is incomplete (e.g., DE, MA, VA). Although in this election many of the Electors were chosen by the legislatures, it is clear that Washington would still have been elected if a nationwide popular vote had taken place.

Just my thoughts. Chronicler3 16:34, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I wasn't terribly clear in writing the footnote. The issue I am trying to communicate is that the popular vote figures are the sums of the popular vote figures in the several states. This is problematic because some states didn't have a popular vote and because those states that did choose electors by popular vote had significant variations in the requirements for the vote; while the figures for each state might be meaningful, the variation among them means that the sums don't tell us a lot, because it's not an apples-to-apples comparison.
This particular problem I am trying to describe is definitely severely curtailed in post-1824 elections: legislative choice ceases to eliminate more than one or two whole states' popular vote, and the universes of voters in the states become more homogeneous.
I hope that you get what I am trying to communicate. Any help you can give in getting this concept across would be appreciated.
— DLJessup (talk) 22:16, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Methods of selecting electors in Massachusetts

Also in MA, the legislature only chose the district Electors if no one received a majority in the popular election. Chronicler3 16:37, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Really? If you have a citation for that, please, please change the electoral college selection table to reflect that.
— DLJessup (talk) 22:02, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Map

North Carolina was not a territory. And why does Virgina include Kentucky? Cameron Nedland 17:02, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, North Carolina was not a territory, but an independent nation at election time. This is a flaw in the map which was obtained from the public domain National Atlas of the United States. Rhode Island was also independent at the time, and both should be blank in the map. Want to update the map?
Virginia includes Kentucky, because Kentucky was part of Virginia until Kentucky achieved statehood in 1792. (Maine was similarly part of Massachusetts until 1820.)
— DLJessup (talk) 18:24, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
I have updated the map myself, but I'm not exactly happy with the results: the map has become more washed out. If anyone would like to take a try and do a better job, please be my guest.
— DLJessup (talk) 18:53, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Armstrong?

The link to the Pennsylvania physican notwithstanding, I do not think we actually know who the mysterious "James Armstong" who received a single electoral vote. Somehow I doubt that an elector from Georgia would give one of his two votes to an obscure medical officer who wasn't even elected to congress until 1793. The main reason, I think, that respectable sources like Congressional Quarterly and the Political Graveyard peg him as that Pennsylvanian is that they frankly don't know who else it could be. I've seen at least one major work on presidential elections list him as from Georgia. This I believe is more likely. James Armstrong was probably a fairly unimportant local official who an elector was familiar with, an 18th century Walter Burgwyn Jones if you will. The problem is that there seem to be more than one James Armstrongs running around in late 18th century Georgia. Georgian legislative records or newspapers from the time might shed some light on the subject. If anyone has easy access to these, I would be interested to see what (if anything) they reveal about the confusion.

24.125.168.51 22:35, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I have incorporated your above comments into the article in the form of a footnote to the electoral vote table.
— DLJessup (talk) 15:08, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
- Well for that matter, the link for John Milton connects to a politician who had not even been born in 1789. The book The First Federal Elections gives a lot of good information on the election of 1789. It included a list of all Presidential Electors. I remember that at least one of the Georgia votes was cast for one of the Electors, but I don't remember which one. Does anyone have access to that book? Chronicler3 10:29, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
According to the Political Graveyard, that John Milton was Georgia secretary of state from 1777 to 1799. I've created a stub article for him and redirected the link appropriately.
— DLJessup (talk) 18:05, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

New information on James Armstrong

In the book _The Documentary History of the First Federal Elections_ [usually simplified to _First Federal Elections_], (Gordon DenBoer, ed., Univ of Wisconsin Press, 1984), James Armstrong is discussed on page 441. Armstrong (c. 1728-1800) served in the Revolution as a major. After the war, he settled in Camden County, Georgia, where he served in the state Assembly in 1787 and 1790. He was elected to the Execurive Council in 1788 and was serving on that body when the Presidential Electors met. Chronicler3 10:40, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I have gone ahead and created James Armstrong (Georgia) as a stub biography of this individual. I have also revised this page to point to that article and revised the footnote to incorporate this new information.
— DLJessup (talk) 15:01, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Excellent. I do not know how to make those changes but wanted to have the new information available. Chronicler3 21:13, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Date

On what date did electors meet? Start of term was AFTER March 4, when Congress first met - curious re details on this --JimWae (talk) 04:35, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

What date was the election held on? If it was the election of 1789, it couldn't have been November 1788..... --Son (talk) 16:18, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

A good overview of the 1789 election states that the Presidential Electors were chosen on 1/7/1789, and they met on 2/4/1789 to cast the electoral votes. Note that several states chose their Electors on slightly different days than the appointed day, with MA and NH holding a first round of elections in 12/1788 and the second round on 1/7/1789. Chronicler3 (talk) 04:18, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

So did they not have a popular vote for president? --Son (talk) 19:22, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

US Flag

Shouldn't the 1796 version be shown on the page rather than the current 50-star flag? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.153.35.3 (talk) 19:44, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

I would vote yes for historical accuracy. Tempshill (talk) 23:10, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

New York "deadlock"

New York failed to appoint its allotment of eight electors because of a deadlock in the state legislature.

Could someone expand a little on this one sentence in the article? Was it a deadlock over one individual elector, or was it a deadlock over whether to make them vote for Washington? Tempshill (talk) 23:10, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

The deadlock came over how to select the Presidential Electors. Gov. Clinton did not call the legislature soon enough to allow time to debate how to choose Electors. The state senate was controlled by the Federalists, and the Assembly by Anti-Federalists. With just a few days to decide, the two houses were still debating whether to use a concurrent ballot or a joint ballot when the deadline passed. Chronicler3 (talk) 02:35, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

A bit confusing

As I understand it, Adams was not running against Washington (but for Vice President), and Washington was had every electoral vote. So why does the box at the top of the page make it look like it was Adams against Washington, and Adams won some of the votes? Can we fix this? -- LightSpectra (talk) 05:03, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree. I would like some clarification as to why it is said that Adams and the rest are running mates of Washington when they were actually running against him. I can sort of see the reasoning because of the fact that the runner up became vice president, but they weren't actually running with Washington. KellanFabjance (talk) 17:56, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Method of choosing electors

The article says how 8 states did it. North Carolina and Rhode Island had not yet ratified the Constitution. But there seems to be no reason why Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania should not be included. http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/documents/presidential/electoral.html DELAWARE - Election of Electors by voters in three districts. MARYLAND - Eight Electors chosen at large by voters. PENNSYLVANIA - Ten Electors elected at large by voters.

I therefore propose to add this information into the article.

Alekksandr (talk) 23:24, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

http://elections.lib.tufts.edu/aas_portal/view-election.xq?id=MS115.002.MD.1789.00003 http://elections.lib.tufts.edu/aas_portal/view-election.xq?id=MS115.002.MD.1789.00002

These sites indicate that, contrary to what is said in the GWpapers site, Maryland had 2 'electoral districts'. The Eastern Shore returned 3 electors and the Western Shore returned 5. I therefore propose to create a category 'state is divided into electoral districts, with 5 electors chosen in 1 district and 3 electors chosen in the other district, in each case by the voters of that district' and put Maryland in that category.

http://elections.lib.tufts.edu/aas_portal/view-election.xq?id=MS115.002.DE.1789.00002

The above site states regarding Delaware that "... voters in each county required to hand in, 'on one ticket or piece of paper,' ... the name of one person (who must be an inhabitant of the county) for Elector. The persons receiving the most statewide votes would be the winners." There were three counties. So strictly speaking a populous county could have returned two of the state's three electors. However, in practice eachof the three counties returned one elector. I propose to add a footnote explaining this.

Alekksandr (talk) 22:02, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Needed to win?

The article states that 35 votes were needed to win - I presume that means the number of electors needed to win the presidential contest in the Electoral College. While I have seen that figure stated on a number of web sites ([1], [2], [3]), I do not think it is correct.

The U.S. Constitution in effect at the time stated that: "The person having the greatest number of votes shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed". While there were 69 electors who voted, there were also two from Maryland and one from Virginia who were appointed, but did not vote. That makes a total of 72 electors appointed, so 37 would be needed for a majority.

Am I missing something? -- JPMcGrath (talk) 16:13, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved per discussion below. - GTBacchus(talk) 21:56, 18 January 2010 (UTC)


United States presidential election, 1789 → United States presidential election, 1788–1789 — To conform with other multi-year elections, as the polls for this election opened on December 1788 and closed on January 1789.—99.29.140.62 (talk) 18:06, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

We have that convention ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:14, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
Not sure about any formal convention, but Croatian presidential election, 2009-2010 was the inspiration for this move. Similarly, there are papal elections at 1268-1271, 1280-1281, 1287-1288, 1292-1294... up until 1830-1831. Although the systems are vastly different, the fact that they actually opened the polls in 1788 and most of the election took place in that year means that the article title should be more accurate.--99.29.140.62 (talk) 04:58, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Unexplained removal of image/party information

User:Ben76266 has twice removed the image of John Adams from the top of this article and has also replaced the Federalist/Anti-Federalist party identification with "None". There may be a valid reason for this, but I think that some sort of explanation is needed for such changes. I am undoing the removal. Please explain your reasons for the changes here if you think they are appropriate. -- JPMcGrath (talk) 21:49, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Just a note, he has also changed other presidential election articles in a similar fashion. I do not see the reason for such a fundamental change in the information in the article. Andy120290 (talk) 01:39, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Federalists and Republicans

The Federalist Party and Republican Party did not exist in 1789. None of the candidates should be listed as having such a party affiliation. FallenMorgan (talk) 01:27, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Connecticut Western Reserve

The map should show that the Connecticut Western Reserve still belonged to Connecticut at the time. Whoop whoop pull up Bitching Betty | Averted crashes 21:12, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

First election?

Was this the first actual U.S. presidential election? If so that should be stated. It seems to be the first on the 'other elections' list. — (unsigned contribution by 142.177.110.216 on Feb 18, 2003) Who was the black man that won by popular vote against George Washington.

There was no popular vote. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.208.108.235 (talk) 15:05, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

bla

bla bla bla — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.22.82.28 (talk) 21:40, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Formatting question

I am unable to place Washington's picture above the section header for the federalist candidates. Right now I have him listed as a federalist, both because it is technically true and because I could not figure out how to do it another way. Any suggestions would be appreciated. 1)The Presidential Candidate/Vice Presidential Candidate distinction is confusing, especially as no such distinction was made on ballots at that time. The results box only counts votes for President, which contributes to the confusion 2)There is very little information surrounding the meeting of electors, and what information there is is not cited This should be clarified, either by creating a unified "candidates" header or by clearly defining why the distinction is being made (such as an explanation that all votes not cast for Washington were intended to select a vice-president). Some good sources would by McCullough's John Adams and Meacham's Thomas Jefferson: the Art of Power. Any other suggestions? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.61.54.235 (talk) 18:58, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Washington in the candidates section

I have changed "former Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army" to "former president of the Philadelphia Convention", as that was the social/political role which he had most recently played. 75.88.87.216 (talk) 01:30, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Info Box Electoral College

For all elections until 1804, a modification was made in the infobox, in some attempt to "clarify" that electoral votes were not specific to President or Vice President. Unfortunately the effect is practically the opposite. In addition, a phrase was added to the "needed_votes" part of the template which implied that both President and Vice President required the same majority in order to be elected to their respective offices. In fact this was not true, particularly in 1796 when Adams won with 71, beating the 70 requirement, but Jefferson became VP with only 68 votes. Prior to the XIIth Amendment this was possible because the Vice President was the person with the second highest number of electoral college votes, and a majority of those votes was not necessary.

On each of these election pages I've removed the phrase about "138 votes for each office individually". But I'm also going to change the apparent double size of the electoral college because although every elector had two votes, they were not permitted to vote twice for the same person, so the effective size of the college for President was still 69 in this election and 132 and 139 in the later ones, not 138, 264 and 276. Silas Maxfield (talk) 10:16, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Only white male adult property owners could vote

This should be pointed out much more clearly in the article, and don't beat around the bush with irrelevant exceptions and nuances please

"Most states allowed only white male adult property owners to vote.[1][2][3] " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_States -- — Preceding unsigned comment added by Two Wrongs (talk • contribs) 19:41, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

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List of presidential electors at the first electoral college--data for adding to article

Request to post list of electors as part of article

I'm not sure how to add these but the historical record shows interesting connections between the electors of the first EC and other events.

The list of the Electors comes from The Documentary History of the First Federal Elections : https://books.google.co.in/books?id=sxS00wE2l5kC&pg=PR13&lpg=PR13&dq=The+Documentary+History+of+the+First+Federal+Elections (pages xxvii to xxix)

Presidential Electors and their votes, February 4, 1789

CODE:

CC (also signed constitution at Constitutional Convention of 1787)

ART (also signed Articles of Confederation, 1778)

DEC (also signed Declaration of Independence, 1776)

ASSOC (also signed Continental Association, 1774)


New Hampshire:

Benjamin Bellows

John Pickering

Ebenezer Thompson

John Sullivan

John Parker


Massachusetts:

Caleb Davis

Samuel Phillips

Francis Dana---- ART

Samuel Henshaw

William Sever

Walter Spooner

Moses Gill

William Cushing

William Shepard


Connecticut:

Samuel Huntington----- DEC, ART

Richard Law

Matthew Griswold

Erastus Wolcott

Thaddeus Burr

Jedidiah Huntington

Oliver Wolcott Sr


New Jersey:

David Brearley --CC

James Kinsey

John Neilson

David Moore

John Rutherfurd

Mattias Ogden


Delaware

Gunning Bedford-- CC

George Mitchell

John Baning


Pennsylvania

James Wilson --CC, DEC

John O’Hara

David Grier

Samuel Potts

Alexander Granydon

Collinson Read

Edward Hand

George Gibson

John Ardnt

Laurence Keene


Maryland

John Rogers

William Tilghman

Alexander Hanson

Phillip Thomas

Robert Smith

William Matthews

George Plater (did not attend)

William Richardson (did not attend)


Virginia:

John Pride

John Harvie

Zachariah Johnston

John Roane

David Stuart

William Fitzhugh

Anthony Walke

Patrick Henry —ASSOC

Edward Stevens

Warner Lewis (did not attend)

James Wood


South Carolina

Christopher Gadsden

Henry Laurens

Edward Rutledge--- DEC

Charles Cotesworth Pinckney-- CC

John F. Grimké

Thomas Heyward, Jr. —ART

Arthur Simkins


Georgia

George Handley

John King

George Walton---DEC

Henry Osborne

John Milton
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:587:E40A:3B00:30A4:DE97:1E0A:976A (talk) 16:54, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Adams

So how many votes did Adams get? Rmhermen 21:08, Jul 25, 2004 (UT)

Adams got 34 electoral votes. GoodDay (talk) 08:17, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Previous requested move

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Done as uncontroversial per Talk:United States presidential election in Connecticut, 1788–1789. Dekimasuよ! 18:10, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

United States presidential election, 1788–89 → United States presidential election, 1788–1789 – This page was originally moved from this proposed title for the sole reason of the rules at MOS:DATERANGE. However, MOS:DATERANGE changed its ruling in July 2016 (per this RFC) to prefer that "year–year" ranges be written like "1881–1886" instead of "1881–86". Wikipedians themselves have ruled that they prefer this format. Per a requested move here, it seems people prefer this format for U.S. presidential elections as well. Because of this discussion, it was agreed that the subpages for each state should moved to this preferred format. Now that they have, it seems odd that the main page itself is the only page on this topic that hasn't moved to Wikipedia's preferred format. The proposed title, while basically just the same amount of conciseness, would have a format agreed upon to be much clearer and more helpful, according to a consensus reached by Wikipedia's Manual of Style and its users. While the MOS says the old two-digit ending thing can be used for two consecutive years, this page and its subtopics should be consistent no matter what. Since this is the style that the subtopic pages legitimately moved to because people preferred it, it should be proposed that it should be used for the main page on the topic. Paintspot Infez (talk) 17:45, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

Done as uncontroversial per Talk:United States presidential election in Connecticut, 1788–1789. Dekimasuよ! 18:10, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Requested move 13 February 2018

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved per consensus. —usernamekiran(talk) 22:32, 20 February 2018 (UTC)


– Per WP:DATERANGE:

Two-digit ending years (1881–82, but never 1881–882 or 1881–2) may be used in any of the following cases: (1) two consecutive years;

--Nevé–selbert 22:02, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
Having closed the move request above and the previous one at Talk:United States presidential election in Connecticut, 1788–1789 that resulted in moving the pages to four-digit years, I'd like to ask that this request go through a full discussion. At present all of the pages are at consistent titles, and letting all of these be decided once again here will make sure that remains the case. However, there's a difference between "may" and "should," so perhaps Neveselbert could comment on the desirability of the proposed change as opposed to its permissibility alone. Dekimasuよ! 22:37, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Support. In the current state of MOS:DATERANGE/WP:DATERANGE, the nominator's interpretation seems correct. The related RFC seems to address instances of year ranges that are not consecutive years, and though some editors mentioned consecutive years, seems that either some or most of them agreed that the consecutive year ranges are permitted to use the "yyyy–yy" format. Steel1943 (talk) 23:27, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Support per nomination and Steel1943. —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 17:18, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Support for same reasons jamacfarlane (talk) 23:41, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Neutral / weak oppose... I see and fully understand the reasons and points made above. However, I'm still a strong believer of the "four-year format is much clearer" mentality. For example, if there was an event taking place from 2011 to 2012, a page with "2011–12" in the title would be unclear on whether it meant a two-year range (2011 to 2012) or the month of December in 2011. Would we have to have a "but not for years ending in a number between 01 to 12" clause? It's overcomplicated and introduces a whole new batch of consistency problems to even have put into use the two-year format. Personally, I agree with the many users in the [July 2016 discussion] who stated that it would be best to just have guidelines that preferred the four-year format and the displaying of all digits. If anything were to be done, it would need to be a site-wide Village pump discussion on whether to continue preferring the two-year format for two consecutive years. Paintspot Infez (talk) 19:24, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
  • SupportThis is much better. No need to have the "17" in the second part of range. Professional organizations do the same thing. Artix Kreiger (talk) 00:40, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

General Election

I see a great deal of material in this section without appropriate citations. After searching, I have located a citation for the following details:

"Electors were chosen by the individual states, and each cast one vote for Washington. The electors used their second vote to cast a scattering of votes: while Adams won a plurality of these votes, a majority of the 69 electors voted for a candidate other than Adams. This was due largely to a scheme perpetrated by Alexander Hamilton, who feared that Adams would tie with Washington, throwing the election to the House of Representatives and embarrassing Washington and the new Constitution. Thus, Adams received only 34 of 69 votes, with the remaining 35 ballots split between ten other candidates."

This is the citation:

Chernow, Ron (2004). Alexander Hamilton. London, UK: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-1101200858. Page 272-273/

To what extent do other think that details of this section require more citations? — Preceding unsigned comment added by SoloOperator (talk • contribs) 21:43, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

SoloOperator (talk) 23:46, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 14:07, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

I find it quite bizarre that Wikipedia has actually claimed popular vote figures in presidential elections from before 1824, likely fudged from another website. I have deleted dubious popular vote references from the 1820 and 1816 elections. A request for comment would be very helpful. Classicalfan626 (talk) 23:43, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

Electoral votes needed to win

The article states, in three different places, that 37 electoral votes were needed to win. 69 electors cast votes. But the smallest possible majority out of 69 votes is 35 votes, not 37. Am I missing something? Chuck (talk) 00:19, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

Depiction of Maine in the electoral map

The depiction of the border of the part of Massachusetts that is now Maine is incorrectly depicted as the modern border. It is depicted correctly from 1804 onward, gaining its modern shape in 1844 after the Webster-Ashburton Treaty that ended the Aroostook War. I encourage someone who is more skilled and familiar with these maps attempt to fix this. I know it's difficult given the weird borders of the states and territories in these early elections. Discuss the issue here. Mdewman6 (talk) 01:41, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Reference to the 12th Amendment in General Election Section

I noticed that in the General Election section an incorrect reference to the 12th Amendment. It says, "However, the stipulation that the President and Vice-President must be from different states dates only to the Twelfth Amendment of 1804" This is not correct. If you look at the original version of Article 2, Section 1, it states, "The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves." The 12th Amendment opens with "The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves". The only change is that the vote for President and Vice President are on the same ballot rather than separate ballots. In point of fact if you look at the Vice President of the United States Wikipedia page, you can see that the position of Vice President was basically created to force states to vote for a candidate from another state. From that article, "Recognizing that loyalty to one's individual state outweighed loyalty to the new federation, the Constitution's framers assumed individual electors would be inclined to choose a candidate from their own state (a so-called "favorite son" candidate) over one from another state. So they created the office of vice president and required the electors to vote for two candidates, at least one of whom must be from outside the elector's state, believing that the second vote would be cast for a candidate of national character.[13][14] Additionally, to guard against the possibility that electors might strategically waste their second votes, it was specified that the first runner-up would become vice president." I think it would be appropriate to remove that sentence from this article. Jpj1421 (talk) 15:57, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Questions on infobox

1. Should the other candidates who each got a different set of votes be placed?

2. Should their popular vote counts be found?

3. If not, why?

Xdude gamer (talk) 15:29, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

I think so. It looks like the first of these elections we do that for is the 1796 United States presidential election; only Washington's votes are noted in both this article 1788–89 United States presidential election and 1792 United States presidential election. The only distinction I can think of is that it wasn't until the 1796 election that we really had the sense of "parties"; but I don't think that really makes a difference.
Unless someone objects or beats me to it, I'll update the infoboxes in both articles. I'll hold off a couple days in case I'm missing something. To the extent it exists (the records of some states' popular votes are noted as being lost) the information is in the article; it shouldn't be that hard of an add.
It should probably be limited to, say, the top two candidates (Washington: 69; Adams: 34) and other (35 votes split among 10 candidates). TJRC (talk) 21:13, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
I would say that would be good. xdude (talk) 22:00, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
Actually, popular vote should not be indicated. As the article indicates, only six of the states selected electors for the electoral college by popular voter; the other four were, I believe, appointed by the state legislatures. TJRC (talk) 21:22, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
That's neat! xdude (talk) 22:00, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Disambiguation

It is implied in the article that "This was the only U.S. presidential election that spanned two calendar years without a contingent election."

But it is also implied that the election process lasted from December 15, 1788 to January 10, 1789 which is only 26 days. Aminabzz (talk) 16:27, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Yes, both are correct. Even if it was just from December 31st to January 1st it would have spanned 2 years. Granted the context is nice there so readers don't think it actually lasted for 2 full years. BogLogs (talk) 00:24, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Map Comment

The current map has New York and Vermont in black because they had no electoral votes in the election but seems to just have Rhode Island taken off the map all together as if it is a part of the Atlantic Ocean. It would be a good idea to have them all black or all not shown on the map. Also the big 0 over New York does not seem to be necessary to me as the explanation makes it quite clear and a bunch of 0's all over the map would look quite poor IMO. BogLogs (talk) 00:33, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

The total popular vote count is given as 43,782, but I cannot find that figure in the cited source (United States Presidential Elections, 1788-1860: The Official Results). One of the sources (https://washingtonpapers.org/resources/articles/the-electoral-count-for-the-presidential-election-of-1789/) states that "the lack of vote counts and other records makes the reconstruction of the total popular vote impossible." Is the figure (43,782) manually summarized from the "A New Nation Votes" website? Could a source be found giving this figure, instead of demanding a new manual summary?

Also, the 1790 census total population is not 3 million. It is 3,929,326, and a non-slave population of 3,231,629. Shilton (talk) 12:56, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Why use light green for independent candidates?

Why not use dark grey (666666) or light grey (999999) which is what is used for independent gains/holds in Congress? CY223 (talk) 00:06, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

I request a complete overhaul of this article in terms of its numbers. I've already changed the popular vote figures in Maryland to reflect just the highest elector, so Maryland's votes aren't counted twice due to having two at-large votes for each shore. There are also problems with other states, such as Virginia, having no ballots listed for Anti-Federalist, even though the state gave 3 electoral votes to the Anti-Federalist candidate.

My biggest problem, and why I'm discussing this on the talk page, is the total popular vote numbers listed in the article. The article lists 39,624 votes for Federalists and 4,158 for Anti-Federalists, making a total of 43,782 for Washington, which is proudly displayed in the infobox. Looking through the history, the number appears to come from a now dead user linking to OurCampaigns. This source was later replaced by @ThadeusOfNazereth:, citing Dubin's United States Presidential Elections, 1788-1860: The Official Results by County and State, a book I happen to own.

The funny thing about these numbers is that they don't appear on pages 1-3, which are cited, nor can I find them on any of the earlier pages. In fact, the numbers listed on this page don't add up to those in the book either. Most of the candidates in that book are not given their party, and the ones that are listed with a party add up to only around 2,000 for the Anti-Federalists and certainly not nearly 40,000 for the Federalists. More funny the numbers don't even match the original OurCampaigns source, they're thousands off from that one too. The only way I could see someone getting close to 40,000 would be by adding up all the candidates, including electors who weren't the highest result for their faction. As far as I can tell, these numbers are completely made up.

Because of this, I request to do a complete overhaul of this article, vaporizing the national vote numbers, and building the total from the ground up with the numbers from A New Nation Votes, a source that, in my opinion, is better for these early election articles. Wowzers122 (talk) 23:43, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

As a general rule, I don't defend edits that I don't have a specific recollection of making, and this one is no exception. I can confirm that those numbers don't appear in the book (I am looking at my copy as I write this comment) so I'm not sure where I got them from. I'd be happy to see the article updated and agree that ANNV is a generally more accurate source. ThadeusOfNazereth(he/him)Talk to Me! 00:34, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Date

Did this election actually take place from December 1788 to January 1789? All the sub articles for participating states list the date as being January 7, 1789, and the date being Dec 1788-Jan 1789 is only mentioned in passing. Talthiel (talk) 17:47, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

@Talthiel: New Hampshire voters started voting for electors on December 15 1788 (Note 24), on a general ticket. As no elector candidate received the "requisite number for a choice", the choice of electors went to the legislature (Note 1). On January 7 1789, the legislature chose the 5 best-performing elector candidates out of 10 (Note 6). Wowzers122 (talk) 15:06, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
well it says on the NH page for this election that it was held on 1789, so then there ought to be a footnote there too? Talthiel (talk) 15:25, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
I'll add it to the page. Wowzers122 (talk)
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