Not surprised by this and they are asking delegates to vote online and not go to Milwaukee
Well, that’s on-brand: Democrats can’t ask anyone to expose themselves to the virus.
I hope they are going to exercise some care with the online voting–shell out for some top-drawer anti-hacking advice and oversight. Seems as though there might be some on many sides who’d like to hack into that particular vote.
What kind of vote would be hacked? Every vote is a pro forma vote.
Even if someone hacked into it and flipped votes to make it seem like Bernie won the nomination, that nonsense would be brought under control quickly.
The nomination of the candidate is only one of the functions that the delegates perform. They also create the party platform and establish the nominating rules for the next presidential election. Votes happen in those other functions and they can be contentious. They certainly are not pro-forma.
But I believe they have public votes, not secret ballots. It’s pretty easy to protect the integrity of public votes. Especially public votes of a smallish number of people. Just make the data easily downloadable to all – anyone can check to see that their own vote is accurate, and anyone can check the totals.
Does anyone read or care about the party platform other than party insiders and the media? the media makes a big deal about it but the average voter could not care less.
Actual contested stuff at the convention itself is pretty rare, I think the last one was a minor spat with Ron Paul delegates that only made the C-Span coverage.
There’s certainly no debates about which slate of delegates to seat, the last one was 1972 I believe.
The platform committees are usually broadcast on C-Span and give me an immediate flashback to endless bickering at college political groups. I may have spent more time listening to arguments over the name of the Gay student union than I did writing my senior paper. But, once the activists have had their say, the adoption of the platform is unanimous.
If there is an old fashioned floor fight, then it could actually get down to a roll call of each person in each state delegation.