Ron Paul ACTUAL delegate count

Miscellaneous Current Events
8

I don’t think you’re understanding the process. Delegates from all the state caucuses and primaries are sent to the Republican National Convention in Tampa. There they will vote on a nominee for the Republican Party.

  1. In multiple states, a majority of the delegates are supporters of Ron Paul.

  2. In some of these states, there is an understanding that the delegates are “bound” based on the rules that the state Republican Party (i.e. the faction of the the Republican Party that operates in that state…it can set it’s own rules so long as it operates under the general rules laid down by the national party). “Bound” means that the delegate cannot vote for whomever they wish, but must vote for whom the party rules designate. This means, that in the case of Nevada for example, Romney is due to receive a certain number of votes from the Nevada delegation because of his percentage of the Nevada Caucus vote, per Nevada Republican Party rules.

  3. As illustrated by Ben Swann, according to the RNC rules for 2008 & 2010 (which evidently may be in effect for this year), Rule 38 states: “No delegate or alternate delegate shall be bound by any attempt of any State or Congressional district to impose the ‘Unit Rule’”. What this means to Ben’s interpretation is that it may not be the case that delegates are bound at all, according to the Republican National Committee rules.

  4. According to this thread on RPF, Ben may not be correct. It’s fuzzy because of the definition of “unit rule”, as that is the only thing Rule 38 applies to. From what it seems like, with the advent of unbound Super delegates, Rule 38 is null, and would only have any effect if a state tried to get rid of its unbound super delegates.

  5. So 22 of the 25 25 of 28 delegates from Nevada are Ron Paul supporters. However, again, according to common understanding, many (if not most) of them are required by Party rules to vote for Romney on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention (the event in Tampa where a nominee for the Republican Party’s candidate for the Presidency of the United States is selected). Again, The Daily Caller:

“The 16 delegates supporting Paul [in Massachusetts] are bound to vote for Romney on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention. If Romney does not achieve the required number of votes on the first ballot, the delegates can vote for the candidate of their choice.”

According to that RPF thread, that may still be the case. And allegedly, there was an attorney Tim Morgan sent by the RNC to scare Ron Paul delegates in Nevada by telling them that if they unbind the delegates that they may not be seated at the National Convention.

  1. So instead of taking the risk of not being seated at the Convention (and not being able to cast a vote for Ron Paul as the nominee for the Republican Party candidate for the Presidency of the United States), again, apparently the final decision made by the Ron Paul Nevada Campaign was to not unbind the delegates (i.e. tell them to vote for Ron Paul anyway) because they can instead simply abstain from voting in the first round, which would have the same effect…as the whole point is to make sure Romney does not have a majority. After the first ballot (i.e. the first round of voting), if no one person has a majority of the votes, then another vote is taken, and the process is repeated until a person does have a majority.

This is how Warren Harding was able to go into the Republican National Convention with six percent of the delegates, and after ten ballots, come out with the nomination with 70 percent of the vote.

So one more time…the 25 of the 28 delegates from the Nevada delegate are Ron Paul supporters, however many of them are required to vote for Mitt Romney at the first vote of the Republican National Convention. Allegedly they were told that if the Nevada Republican Party unbinds them from that requirement (i.e. tells them that they can vote for whoever they want on the first ballot) then the Republican National Committee will not allow them to vote at all at the Republican National Convention. So instead of risk that, the Ron Paul Campaign of Nevada simply plans to have the Nevada delegates abstain from voting at all during the first ballot.

This will have the desired effect of making sure Romney does not have a majority of the vote (to secure the nomination for the Republican Party candidate for the Presidency of the United States) so that there will have to be another vote…in which all delegates can vote for whomever they want…Which means, Ron Paul would probably win the nomination, as he probably has more actual supporters who are delegates than any other candidate.

Capiche?