a person who has a right to elect or choose another to an office, honour, &c. See ELECTION.

Elector is particularly, and by way of eminence, applied to those princes of Germany in whom lies the right of electing the emperor; being all sovereign princes, and the principal members of the empire.

The electoral college, consisting of all the electors of the empire, is the most illustrious and august body in Europe. Bellarmine and Baronius attribute the institution of it to Pope Gregory V. and the emperor O-