What does "elector" mean?

elector — meaning, definition & examples

Definition

n. a person who is allowed to vote in an election. In some countries, this word is used for people who vote for a president or a specific group of leaders.

n. a person who is entitled to vote in an election. Often used in the context of indirect elections, such as those for the president of the United States, where voters elect a group of electors who then cast the final vote.

simple

“Every elector has the right to vote in the local election.”

contextual

“The state's electors met in a secret session to cast their votes for the national candidate.”

complex

“The constitutional framework ensures that each elector's vote carries equal weight, maintaining the integrity of the indirect electoral process despite the varying population sizes of different states.”

From Middle English electour (“one with a right to vote in electing some office, elector”), borrowed from Late Latin ēlēctor (“chooser, selector; voter, elector”), from Latin ēligere (“to elect”) + -tor (suffix forming masculine agent nouns), equivalent to elect + -or. Ēligere is the present active infinitive of ēligō (“to extract, pluck or root out; (figurative) to choose, elect, pick out”), from ē- (variant of ex- (prefix meaning ‘away; out’)) + legō (“to appoint, choose, select”) (from Proto-Italic legō (“to gather, collect”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European leǵ- (“to collect, gather”)).

Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

VERB

NOUN

elector(C1)

ADJECTIVE

Politics