GOP Convention from the POV of a Peon Delegate

In essence what you’re asking is – what would it take for them to ignore the rules about who to vote for on the 1st ballot, because that’s the only way they’d conceivably be thwarting the people’s will. I don’t know if delegate votes for past conventions are confidential. If not it shouldn’t be too difficult to find SOMEBODY who voted for a favorite son or some such, but I imagine not many people are willing to go on record as violating party discipline.

ISTM that only Trump and Cruz have any actual delegates under current rules. You have to win 8 states to be nominated, so any Rubio/Kasich/Bush (does Jeb! have any delegates?) delegates won’t be able to vote for their man.

Does anyone know if they count as free agents? I’d imagine that various states may have rules about allocating them to nominated candidates, but were any of the contests that Rubio and Kasich won winner take all? That would be whole nother can of worms.

No, no that’s not what I’m trying to say.

Hm. Say 60% of primary ballots in a given state go for Trump. If an elected member of the state house votes for Kasich or Paul Ryan, he may face electoral consequences, even if he does that on the 2nd ballot.
Don’t get me wrong. I oppose the primary system. I think the delegates should do whatever they think they can get away with. I’m just saying there could be consequences for delegates who have a potential political future. Or not: it’s a concern but not necessarily a compelling one. I don’t know.
As for party discipline – parties are weak. Most campaigns are self-funding. Reince Priebus has limited leverage.

In the second ballot and later the delegates are unbound, they can support whoever they wish. Why would there be “electoral consequences”?

This seems to be a good breakdown of what happens to Rubio’s delegates. Summary: it varies by state, but a lot of states prevent bound delegates from going anywhere until after the first ballot, regardless of circumstances.

Assuming that the delegate is an elected official, constituents punishing him/her by voting for someone else in the next election.

It really is time for the US to unify election law nationally. I’m actually still okay with the Electoral College concept and all that, but the rules for registration/eligibility, affiliation, absentee balloting, poll availability/hours, delegate assignment, etc. need to be unified. I say this knowing full-well that it may cause a favored candidate of mine to lose in some future election.

Those rules no longer exist (they were specific to 2012), and would have to be renewed by the Rules Committee as well as surviving a floor vote from the delegates.

Assuming that Rule 40 remains unchanged, delegates for Rubio or Kasich would be left unable to vote at all on the first ballot: It being the first ballot, they’d still be bound to their candidate, and so couldn’t vote for anyone else, but by Rule 40, they’d also not be able to vote for them, either. They would still, effectively, be votes against Trump: A win requires the majority of all delegates, not just those who are voting. A vote for Rubio or Kasich is thus exactly the same as an abstention from the vote.

Any delegates who happen to be elected officials of some sort might face electoral pressure, one way or the other, from their constituents, but which way that pressure would go would depend on just who their constituents are. And in any event, most of the delegates are not elected officials: They’re folks that nobody’s ever heard of. Like, if you go to a candidate’s headquarters office in your area, or the party’s, and ask for a brochure or a bumper sticker or the like, the person who answers your questions is the kind of person who would likely be selected as a delegate.

Suppose you’re a delegate bound to vote for Trump on the first ballot. You decide to vote for Cruz instead. What happens? Does the leader of your state delegation refuse to accept your vote? Suppose he’s a Cruz guy himself. Would he look the other way? So you have 30 delegates and 20 are bound to vote this way and 10 another way. How exactly do they enforce that in a crowded and noisy convention hall?

Can’t remember another major-party convention where top officeholders were encouraged to stay away: http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/12/politics/republican-convention-2016/index.html

I wonder whether any of them will walk out in the midst of the eventual nominee’s address. It happened in 1964.

A cite regarding the profile of the typical delegate would be appreciated if you have one. I tend to agree though as a matter of common sense. And if you are correct, these folk would be more amenable to pressure from local politicos than from national ones. Maybe.

The tone of much of the commentary seems a little different. Nate Silver at 538 describes Pennsylvania’s unusual number of unbound delegates: [INDENT][INDENT] The stakes in Pennsylvania are higher than the 17 bound delegates imply, however. Voters will also elect 54 unbound delegates — three from each congressional district — directly on the ballot. … Unlike in other states where delegates are directly elected, such as Illinois and West Virginia, there’s no guidance on the primary ballot as to which candidates those delegates might support.

However, slightly more than half of Pennsylvania’s unbound delegates said they’d support the candidate who wins the popular vote statewide or in their districts, according to a survey conducted by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. True, those delegates could change their mind later, with an April primary being a fairly distant memory in the event of a July contested convention. But particularly if Trump (or some other candidate) wins the state emphatically, he could get a couple of dozen unbound Pennsylvania delegates to go along for the ride. At the very least, it’s worth thinking about the bloc of Pennsylvania delegates separately from other categories of unbound delegates; they’ll potentially be more amenable to Trump and are an underrated means by which he might get to 1,237 delegates if he pulls up a bit short after California. [/INDENT][/INDENT] In order to provide informed speculation of unbound delegate behavior, we need a sense of their incentives. An occupational profile might be a decent start. Are these folk basically hobbyists? Are they small time elected officials or beholden to elected officials? If they are gregarious hobbyists, they might want to go along with the state majority anyway, so as not to make waves.

Oops. Pennsylvania’s unbound delegates appear on the ballot. That’s unlike most unbound delegates. So as Silver notes, we should think of them separately. I’d still like an occupational profile of each grouping though.

That’s why Brain Glutton posts wearing a cowl and cape, with a mysterious “BG” logo in his shirt.

I want to see the Brainmobile. :slight_smile:

538 has some info: Behind the scenes with 2016’s delegate hunters. Here’s how the candidates work the ropes. Step 1: Find name of delegate. Step 2: Look them up using google and Nexis/Lexis.

Step 3. Figure out what motivates them. Are they in the “Represent the will of the people” camp? Are they fervently in the camp of the candidate that they represent? What is their philosophy?

Step 4. What is their personality? Do they want their hands held? Do they want to be called three times a day by every campaign? Or once a week? Are the susceptible to persuasion from someone they respect? Of course I’m wondering whether there’s any scope for leverage of one kind or another.

I hope there are more articles of this nature. Kasich currently has 6 delegate hunters on staff. Occasionally he will call a delegate directly. Apparently this process really accelerates after the last primary on June 7.