From: cnn,com, by Gregory Krieg, on Apr 7, 2016, see the article HERE.
Though he holds the delegate lead, Trump’s path to win the 1,237 delegate majority he’ll need to lock up the GOP nomination by the end of the primary calendar in June has gotten more difficult. If Trump continues collecting delegates at the same pace as he has been to date, he will not make the threshold; he would have to improve his results in the remaining contests to reach a delegate majority.
Related: The long and winding road to the Republican nomination
That means the party is currently on track to arrive at its July convention without a presumptive nominee for the first time since Ronald Reagan challenged the incumbent President Gerald Ford in 1976.
President Gerald Ford listens as Ronald Reagan delivers a speech during the closing session of the Republican National Convention on August 19, 1976 in Kansas City, Missouri.
The prospect of a contested convention creates the potential for all kinds of intrigue, but it is also presents more mundane challenges.
For the candidates, delegates and party foot soldiers now faced with a political and parliamentary labyrinth generations in the making, there is no roadmap — only riddles and questions.
Here are seven we can answer right now.
1) How does a contested convention become a brokered convention?
Simple: If no candidate arrives in Cleveland with a majority, then the convention is considered “contested.” If, for example, Trump is within 100 votes of 1,237, then there is a possibility he convinces enough uncommitted delegates to lock up the nomination on the first ballot. Ford defeated Reagan in 1976 by similar means.
But if no one emerges with the magic number after that first round, the real action begins.
The states and territories are governed by slightly differing rules, but most require their bound delegates — the ones awarded during the primaries and caucuses — to vote according to those results for only one round.
If there’s no winner, more than half of the delegates immediately become free agents. This is when the convention moves into its “brokered” phase and the campaigns begin to vigorously compete for their support on a second ballot. Some states require their delegates to remain pledged through multiple rounds. California, for instance, only releases its bounty of 172 delegates before the third vote.
2) Is there any way of knowing how the delegates will vote after they are unbound
Not really.
In Arkansas, for instance, we know that Donald Trump won 16 pledged delegates to Ted Cruz’s 15 and Marco Rubio’s 9. But there will be another vote, at a statewide gathering late April, to decide who will be the individuals charged with delivering those votes at the national convention.
Tom Lundstrum is one of the hopefuls. A former state GOP rules chairman, he is running to be one of Cruz’s delegates in Cleveland.
What would Lundstrum do in the event Kasich and Trump were the only two viable candidates, and Cruz was out of the game?
“If I’m elected to go to the convention, I will represent Ted Cruz on behalf of the people of Arkansas who voted for him. And if I am a Cruz delegate, I will not change my ballot until I’m told by Ted Cruz that he’s releasing his delegates, if it comes to that,” he told CNN.
“I don’t know at this point what would induce me to vote for (Trump) or (Kasich) — if that’s who it comes down to, I would have to give some serious consideration to the fact that Donald Trump won the plurality of Arkansas delegates,” he continued. “And so I’m thinking on the behalf of my state — I’m there to represent them, not myself — I think I’d be inclined to always… If I’m going to make an error it’s going to be on the side of the voters of Arkansas.”
Now imagine a couple hundred people with similarly conflicted feelings and loyalties.
3) What is the “Rules Committee” and what kind of power do they have?
The party’s “Rules Committee” is as powerful as it is difficult to handicap. In the end, it will comprise 112 members, with two representatives — one man, one woman — from each of the 56 states and territories sending delegates to the convention.
Further complicating matters, many of the states, even those that have already allotted delegates mathematically, have not yet elected the individuals who will make up the numbers.
“Part of the confusion is that we don’t even know yet who most of these people are going to be,” said Richard E. Berg-Andersson, researcher and historian for The Green Papers blog, a long-running authority on the nominating process. “Most of the states haven’t held the district or state conventions that will actually name the warm bodies sitting in the seats. They don’t even know who from Iowa will be eligible from Iowa to be on the rules committee.”
4) What is “Rule 40” and does it apply in 2016?
In past years, the process had mostly been an afterthought. But the pre-convention meeting in 2012 was more contentious than usual, as loyalists to Mitt Romney led a successful push to change a number of rules. Among them: a requirement that candidates win a majority of the delegates in at least eight states in order to be considered viable at the convention.
But — as Republicans versed in the rules will tell you, the eight-state requirement in Rule 40 could easily be changed. Rules Committee delegates will vote on a new slate of by-laws at the convention in 2016 and might again tweak the number of states at that time.
It would have to be altered — or interpreted differently — if party grandees wanted to make way for a late-entering longshot challenger — like, say, Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan.
5) Which states will have the most power going into a contested convention?
Influence at a contested convention has less to do with delegate count or size than rules and procedure. For that reason, keep an eye on Pennsylvania.
In a state with 71 total delegates, only 17 will enter the convention pledged to a candidate. The other 54 will effectively be up for grabs, regardless of the outcome of the state’s April 26 primary. North Dakota, which held its state convention last weekend, and some of the territories have similar systems.
Colorado and Wyoming are two more states likely to get some attention. Though Ted Cruz won 9 of the 12 delegates on offer at Wyoming’s county convention, there will be another 14 available during a state convention on April 16. Colorado will directly elect 34 delegates on Saturday. These typically quiet competitions, with a small number of voters to convince, are taking on added importance as the race tightens.
6) What happens to delegates assigned to candidates who drop out of the race — do they become free agents right away?
This question is decided on a state-by-state basis.
“There are three basic flavors to the release process,” explains Josh Putnam, a political scientist and founder of Frontloading HQ. “On one end of the spectrum you’ve got delegates who are locked in regardless of how many ballots it goes, states like Iowa. On the other end of spectrum you’ve got states like New Hampshire and Michigan that, once a candidate’s out, their delegates are automatically released and unbound.”
The third category is the most intriguing.
In a number of states, delegates are reallocated automatically based in part on the results of the original primary or caucus vote. Kentucky, Putnam notes, is a good example. The state voted on March 5, with Marco Rubio winning 7 delegates. With the Florida senator now leaving the race, his 7 delegates are likely to become uncommitted, then bound again by the Kentucky delegation.
7) Trump has said he should be the nominee if he has a plurality of the vote — could that be enough?
Any change to the requirement that a candidate win the 1,237 nominating majority, the bedrock rule of the primary process, is almost certainly off the table.
“It’s a marathon, and if you run a marathon, even if all the other runners collapse before the 25-mile mark, if you collapse at the 26-mile-mark, you haven’t crossed the finish line,” is how Berg-Andersson explained the GOP’s thinking. “So the finish line here is 1,237 delegates. Sorry, that’s the rule.”
Putnam agreed — a plurality simply won’t do it.
“I doubt any change is in the offing,” he said. “I don’t think they would either lower that or raise it in an effort to prevent Trump. That sort of proposal has never really come up.”
~~~~~~~~~~
The talking heads are all agog at the possibility of a contested convention and the various scenarios that might play out. Here are some possibilities: Trunp goes into the convention with 1,237 or more delegates pledged to him – end of story – he’s the nominee. If Trump doesn’t have the preordained 1,237 delegate votes on the first ballot then many (not all) delegates will be free to vote for a different candidate, e.g., Cruz or Kasich. That’s where Ted Cruz’s “ground game” would pay off. He has convinced many delegates to swing to him on a second and subsequent ballot and by all accounts, has a good chance of winning the nomination on that second ballot. Of course, if Cruz can’t get to the magic 1,237 number on the second ballot, a third ballot will be necessary and bedlam will likely result. Once we get to a third (and subsequent) ballot(s), there are too many possibilities to recount here, but rest assured that there will be some plain and fancy wooing, cajoling, arm-twisting, and every other method of persuasion being used to convince a delegate to vote for a certain candidate.
Of course, the worst-case scenario would be one where an individual other than Trump or Cruz could end up with the necessary votes to become the nominee. If that happens (we’re assured by Reince Priebus that it won’t) the crappola will hit the fan – big time. Don’t you just know that some in the media are getting all aroused at the thought of the Republicans self-destructing that way?
We DO live in interesting times, don’t we?
Garnet92.
Categories: Political
Pesky Truth 
There’s also the factor of Rubio’s delegates. He has 171 delegates and didn’t actually quit his campaign, but suspended it. What happens to his delegates goes back to question #6 and depends on which category those states fall into. I don’t know enough about the workings of the convention to know if he would be a useful tool to the RNC, who really doesn’t want Trump or Cruz.
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I just looked into that Kathy and here’s the way it works out. Rubio wrote letters to all of the states where he won delegates asking them to NOT release his delegates, but allow them to remain tied to him. It appears that they’re going to do that (Alaska had already split them up between Trump and Cruz but has returned them to Rubio’s control). That has the effect of keeping his 171 delegates away from Trump on the first ballot making the 1,237 more difficult for him. They expect Rubio to release them for the second ballot and encourage them to vote for Cruz. That’s a pretty decent thing for him to do.
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That is a very decent thing for him to do and the absolutely best option for our country.
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I’ve got some concerns about the vote in Cleveland. There may be union bullying type tactics used on delegates. (I had a little young nurse aid who lived alone with her little girl when I was head nurse of the psych unit at a hospital. The Teamsters were trying to organize workers. They visited her and threatened her that if she didn’t vote for the union to represent the workers, they knew were she lived. She came to me scared to death.) This sounds like the plans of the Trump machine for the convention. The wolves are at the door!
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I think that we should expect it – and so should Cruz’s people. Trump, like the union thugs, depends on intimidation to get their way. They can’t compete on facts or logic, so like the democrats, they lie, exaggerate, and intimidate to win – it’s the only way that they can win.
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Within the delegates, that would backfire, though they might persuade a few.
It is somewhat expected in communities with Democrat leanings, but not amongst conservatives & Republicans.
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I’m positive that the majority requirement won’t be changed.
It is also highly likely that Rule 40 won’t be changed, unless we’re deadlocked after multiple rounds.
My biggest fear is that Trump gets close enough so an offer of the VP slot to Kasich puts him over the top. I believe that would be our weakest ticket.
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I concur with your “biggest fear” scenario Curtis. Talk about a dysfunctional ticket – Trump/Kasich – WOW! But, that may be the very reason that Kasich is staying in the race – the VP slot. I doubt that Trump really cares who his second banana is, all he wants are those 143 delegates that bring with them the throne and scepter. And he is likely to be within that 143 number at the end. It’s a scary thought.
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Except that Kasich said he didn’t want the VP slot, so was he lying or could he change his mind as things progress? A lot will ride on that, I think.
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Well, I’m no Karl Rove, but as far as I’m concerned, there can be only two reasons for Kasich staying in the race (I’ve grown to really dislike him).
One, he believes that he still has an outside chance of becoming the “White Knight” nominee, pushed by the establishment into the role after several ballots fail to achieve a nominee and,
two, he’s in it for what he can get out of it, a VP slot or maybe a cabinet member in exchange for his 143 delegates. That’s my .02 cents worth.
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That’s kinda my thinking too. He lied and now the ego is taking over because he’s never had this much national attention. (I’ve never liked him much, especially knowing he took money from Soros)
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