Everyone, please calm a bit down. No reason to get excited.
Lance, lance, lance. Don’t you see? The only acceptably “courageous” differing opinion we can take is that it will *definitely *happen. :rolleyes:
Majority of the delegates.
I am very confused. Is the suggestion that the delegates from a state to the GOP Convention will be exactly the same people regardless of who wins that primary, the only difference being who they’re pledged to on the first round? Surely the successful candidates specify at least some of the delegates, no?
If they’re selected by the GOP state authority, who selects that authority? I thought the primaries were the grass-roots process whereby each state’s party authority is chosen. If that’s not correct, what democratic process does control that state’s party?
Each state has its own process.
In Illinois, for example, each candidate selects their own slate of delegates. Rest assured that they will be vetted hard core supporters of the candidate (unless the candidate’s state operation is utterly incompetent).
The primary ballot is in two parts: First there is the “beauty contest.” Here the voter selects a candidate. This is the figure that the headlines in the press will report, but it has no effect on delegates.
The second part is the selection of the delegates. Everyone running for delegate from that district will have their names listed followed by the name of the candidate they are pledged to or “uncommitted.” Here is where the voter selects the delegates that go to the convention. The voter can vote for delegates pledged to a different candidate than the one he voted for in the beauty contest, if he likes.
THIS IS NOT THE SAME IN ALL STATES.
Here is an article from the Chicago Tribune explaining the process in Illinois.
If you get blocked by the paywall, google for “Illinois presidential primary not till March, but scramble to make ballot days away” and click on the first article that shows up from the Tribune.
That’s a truly amazing process. So one could vote for, say, Trump, yet vote also for all of, say, Kasich’s delegates and none of Trump’s?
Google says there are 69 Republican delegates to the convention. Right now it seems there are 12 candidates still in the running, although the actual number may be even more.
This implies the ballot will have some 850 names on it! I cannot imagine any way this might just possibly induce confusion and mis-voting or under-voting by many voters.
By contrast, I have voted over the years in 6 states’ primaries. Some were open (all-party) and others closed (declared party only). In all cases I’ve only seen the opportunity to vote for the candidate him/herself. All the rest of the who’s-a-delegate machinations were/are behind the scenes in those states.
yes.
Traditionally, the party bosses have put up a slate of “uncommitted” or “favorite son” delegates. Loyal party members would vote in the beauty contest for whoever they wanted, but vote for the uncommitted or favorite son delegation to give party leaders leverage at the convention. But that hasn’t happened in a long, long time.
Oh, no. Nothing like that. I probably didn’t explain it well. The Tribune article is a lot clearer. Each candidate chooses 3 (I think) delegates to run in each Congressional district and three alternates. You only vote for the ones running in your district. In fact, the Tribune article points out that Santorum lost out on some potential delegates last time around because his in-state team was too disorganized and didn’t nominate any delegates in several districts.
Different strokes for different states!
Thanks for all the explanations.
Your final comment is really the truth. The one thing you can say about US states is that no two have the same answer to darn near everything once you dig into the details even a smidgen. Which I’m sure drives our foreign members nuts.
“So you really have 50-plus different ways to vote for the single federal office of President? Yup. Doesn’t that seem … odd to you? Nope.” No wonder they think we’re crazy.
This isn’t a vote for president though, it’s the process of selecting candidates by a party. The actual vote in November is pretty simple and uniform.
There may be 50 different ways of selecting the candidates, but nobody has to worry about more than one of them, since you only participate in one state’s process. Just like voting - each state has different eligibility requirements for voting, but you only have to worry about one as a voter. It’s only complicated when we try to keep track of the whole thing like we’re doing here, or if you’re a foreigner trying to understand it all at once.
Up through 2012, Republicans got to vote twice in the Ohio primary. Once for statewide delegates and once for congressional district delegates. And the filing requirements were different, so sometimes a candidate would qualify for the statewide ballot but not all the district ballots. (For 2016 there’s just one statewide ballot, and since the governor is running it’s now a winner-take-all state.)