Suppose a state has already had a primary, and Candidate A has won. And suppose, at some later date, a sizable percentage of Candidate A’s supporters change their allegiance and now support Candidate B . . . enough that if the primary were held today, Candidate B would win, and this remains so up to the convention. Do the voters have any recourse to change the delegate count before the convention, or are the primaries carved in stone? What about influencing the super delegates to override the primary result?
As far as I know, once you’ve voted that’s that. You could always try to influence the superdelegates, God knows every one else is trying to.
Some Michigan Democrats knowing their primary was not supposed to count voted in the Republican primary. Now they’re concerned because if a “do over” is allowed they won’t be able to vote in the Democratic one, having already used their primary vote.
The primary result is official. If you change your mind, there’s no do-over.
Consider the people who voted for, say John Edwards in the early primaries. Obviously, they don’t support Edwards any more, but their vote for Edwards is still counted.
Anything else would be impossible to regulate.
There could still be a movement for candidate B as an independent or third party candidate. If B got a lot of votes, it would be virtually certain to throw the election to the other party. That hasn’t stopped the scenario from playing out, as with Teddy Roosevelt’s “Bull Moose” party in 1912, formed after TR failed to unseat Taft for the Republican nomination at the convention. In more recent times, John B. Anderson dropped out of the Republican primaries midway through in 1980 to mount a campaign as an independent. Although, in that case, Reagan still won the election. While nominally a Republican, Anderson was a “Rockefeller Republican” and probably bled off more of Carter’s votes than Reagan’s.
I’m gonna mention this here, because I had to look up the law recently (we thought this might be an issue because one of our former county commissioners lost the primary), and it wasn’t real easy to find, so dammit, I’m getting some use out of it!
Texas Election Code, section 162.015:
In short, if you ran in the primary and lost, you can’t run in the general election afterwards as a candidate for another party, nor can you even run as a write-in. But, this only applies here in Texas, your state may vary.
Texas is apparently one of only four states that claim their “sore loser” law applies to presidential candidates:
Note that John Anderson’s campaign established precedent in many cases, where he indeed appeared on ballots in all 50 after losing in some state primaries before dropping out of the race.
You can try to influence the elected, pledged delegates to change their mind. You’ll have about the same chance of success as if you try to flap your arms and fly to China, but hey, you can try.
Also remember that pledged delegates are only pledged on the first ballot. If no candidate receives a majority on the first ballot, they are free to vote for whomever they wish.