Should GOP Fear a "Brokered Convention"?

Should GOP Fear a "Brokered Convention"?
by
James Scott Trimm

Lately there has been a lot of hand wringing by some about the idea of the RNC delegates choosing the party nominee. 

Our Founding Fathers always had delegates choose their party nominees in the party conventions.  The Founders never envisioned the primary election system.  The primary elections were an invention of Progressive Era reformers and did not begin until the 20th century!  The Primary elections were originally intended to be taken under advise by the delegates, these elections were not even binding until the 1960's! In fact the Libertarians still choose their nominee the old fashioned way, through delegates at their national convention.

There is no difference between a "contested convention" and the way a convention is supposed to work.  In fact we had a contested convention back in 1976. 

But now suddenly the media wants you to believe that democracy is threatened if RNC delegates choose our nominee.

OK so here is how it works: the first round vote of the convention delegates is "bound" by the results of the primary election.  But to win the nomination a nominee must win a majority (50% plus 1) of the delegates.  So to win the nomination in the first round, via the primary election, a candidate must win 1,237 delegates.  Otherwise further rounds of voting take place until a majority back a single candidate.  This is an important part of the system, designed to prevent a minority from choosing a nominee that the majority actually oppose.  In elections we have run offs to prevent the minority from choosing the nominee, but that is obviously impractical here.

Now we come to the concern about the "establishment" substituting an "establishment" figure as the nominee rather than either Trump or Cruz.

Under rule 40b of the current rules, a candidate must have won the majority of delegates in at least eight states to be eligible for the nomination.  Meaning that in this case, only Trump and Cruz will be considered in the second round vote.

Now notice I said "current rules".  By this I refer to the rules used for the 2012 GOP Convention.  However each convention establishes its own rules.  The Rules Committee will create and propose a set of rules which will be brought to the floor, debated, potentially amended on the floor, and voted either up or down by the general assembly of the Convention delegates.  However, the rules committee does not start from scratch, they always the previous Convention rules as a basic starting point.  Certainly all eyes will be on "rule 40b" and whether it was substantively changed, and for that reason, I think a change of this rule is unlikely.

So who are the delegates?  Are the the Republican Elite?  Are they the Establishment?  Who they are and how they got there is a mystery to many, and that is a shame.  Its unfortunate that the convention system is not taught in our schools.

After the polls close in each voting precinct in Texas, there is a precinct meeting, typically chaired by the local Precinct Chair.  A precinct is typically a neighborhood sized breakdown of the county (at least in the suburbs).  Anyone who voted in the primary of the Republican Party may participate in this precinct meeting.  At this meeting two major things are done; first a group of delegates are selected to represent the precinct at the County or Senatorial District Convention (some populous counties are broken down into Senatorial District Conventions), and resolutions for the party platform may be proposed and voted on to be sent up to the county or SD convention to be considered there.  At the County/SD convention, the same process occurs on a larger scale, and delegates and platform proposals and resolutions are sent to the State Convention where the same process occurs again toward the national convention. 

Anyone who wants to be involved can and should show up to their precinct meeting and volunteer to be a delegate.  If you show up and volunteer you are almost certain the be sent up as a delegate to the SD/County convention.  For example in my precinct we were allowed to send up to thirty delegates to the Senatorial District Convention, all six of the people who showed up at our precinct meeting became SD delegates.  

These delegates are chosen by voters from the ground up, starting at neighborhood meetings.  They tend to represent the grassroots.

So it appears as a function of math that no one GOP candidate will win the nomination via the primary vote (i.e. the pledged first round vote of the delegates) and that the delegates will choose the nominee in the second round vote, where they are not pledged.  This is no reason for panic and no reason for conspiracy theories.  This is normal, it is how a convention is supposed to work.  Let not your heart be troubled.