http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/electors.html I've been hearing discussions on some conservative talk radio shows on possible ways the Republican party can prevent Trump from being elected President even if he wins sufficient numbers of delegates. Yes, Bush could win. I didn't understand the logic. At lunch today a friend holding a high position in a county Republican organization explained how it could work. Rather than misquote, a relevant paragraph sums it up quite succinctly. To be sure, the process could be very messy for those Electors from States with laws o. I would image there would be judicial challenges across the fruited plain and legal penalties applied. At best some persons would be persona non gratis. The linked page is from the U.S. Electoral College Home, hosted by the Federal Register. I recommend reading the entire Web page before commenting on the full article. States that can control electors are listed. If I understand this correctly, Hillary's super delegates could change their votes too (with the same possible ramifications). Biden, anyone? Did I suggest reading the entire Web page linked above? Interesting read.
You need to change the title, you are confusing two things. The primary delegate system and the electoral college (which is used in the general election) they are completely different things. Since most of your post is about the primary delegate system, that is what I assume you want to talk about. The first thing to understand about the primary system is that the political parties are in charge. The parties are deciding THEIR candidate and therefor make the rules on how they determine who will be THEIR candidate. They change those rules after almost every election cycle. For instance, after 2012, the Republicans changed their system to where any primary after March 15 is a winner-take-all election. They did this so that there is a winner sooner. They also frequently shuffle the dates of when different states have primaries. So to go further. Republican rules say that if at the convention, no candidate has 50% of the delegates, then all delegates are free to vote for who they want. You see Rubio talking about this. If Trump falls short of 50% of the delegates, then all delegates could vote for Rubio, or as you said even Bush and he would be the nominee. This is very dangerous and likely would never happen because you would basically be telling Trump supporters that their votes didn´t count. If Trump has 49% of the delegates and Rubio has 25% of delegates and the delegates nominate Rubio, it is very likely Trump supporters would abandon the party. Even without 50% of delegates, the frontrunner, just for psychological reasons almost must be the nominee. The Democrats have things called superdelegates. Basically any federally elected person, as well as some previous federally elected politicians ( Bill Clinton for example is a super delegate) are delegates and get a vote at the convention. There are about 800 of them. They do NOT vote at all until the convention, but usually most of them say who they are going to vote for before the convention. So right now, Hillary has 750 who say they will vote for her, and Bernie has about 25 who say they will vote for hm. But since they actually do not vote until the convention, yes it is likely that many of them will change their votes depending on the state-by-state delegate elections. In 2008, it was a concern for Obama, while he was winning the state delegates, Hillary had already gotten the promise of many superdelegates.. but as Obama kept winning states, gradually those superdelegates peeled away from Hillary. I believe Hillary did get more superdelegate votes than Obama, but it wasn´t enough to overcome the state delegate lead he had.
Bound and unbound delegates are even more complicated because they are determined state-by-state. But again, even unbound delegates , even though they technically can, do not vote against the state votes unless it is to pile on the winner. There would be a scandel of epic proportions in either party if a mass of unbound delegates voted against their state results which caused the loser to win. Even in the Republican party right now, you probably would never see that happen against Trump because the backlash from Trump voters would be huge and Trump would probably run as a 3rd party candidate.
I was confused by the title and the electoral college has nothing to do with how candidates are selected by the parties. I do feel the rules are there as a back up in case someone gets nominated who is not the party choice. It has happened before, and that's why Bush kept going for longer than he should have. Ultimately each party will have planned what outcome they want and try to manipulate the results. We expect that.
Mea culpa. I know what my friend told me, but the Internet search for background led me in the wrong direction.
Most people who understand politics understand that the primary process is slightly (or moderately) rigged to get the candidates elected that the establshment wants elected. I pointed this out before. In New Hampshire, Bernie Sanders crushed Hillary by a huge margin.... yet she got just as many delegates as he did. The problem is this is complicated stuff, and the general public doesn´t understand it, and the media doesn´t report about it. The ONLY time it is going to become obvious is if someone wins the popular vote, and wins the most states, and then is robbed of the nomination because the rules were stacked against him. When the obvious winner does not win, then people are going to put a microscope to the rules. Tangent. I said the same thing about boxing. The rules and way boxing is judged the past 20 years is confusing to many casual fans. You can watch a fight, see a clear winner, and then see someone else win a unanimous decision. Mayweather capitalized on the rules. In any event, as someone who has been a boxing fan for decades, there were probably 10 of his fights (including pac-man) where myself, and most casual observers thought he lost easily. In any event, if they take the nomination away from Trump using some crazy rules, it is going to cause a revolt against those rules.
Maybe that news item is the reason why Mitt Romney and his cohorts are dreaming of beating out Trump in the nomination. To them, being popular is not a factor and they can override it in the electoral college selection. However, what would happen if they would choose a candidate that is not popular? Even inside the party that candidate couldn't win so how he win over Hillary in the elections? There is a logic in that argument that there is no law but is it practical to do that? Going against the tide is a political suicide.
Mitt Romney isn't trying to beat Trump, he isn't running. He just doesn't want Trump to be the Republican candidate. The man's allowed to have an opinion. Especially as he has been a life long Republican and Trump was an independent leaning Democrat until two years ago.
