RNC & Its Attorney Proclaim State Delegates ‘Unbound’

Ron Paul: Keeping the Elite on their Toes…

Front Porch Politics

In an article last week, it was pointed out that many of the delegates that the states are actually electing are Ron Paul delegates. Though Paul has not won a single state in the primaries, he has won several in delegate counts. While the main stream media and the GOP apparently think that Mitt Romney is the nominee, that has yet to be seen.

Ben Swann of Fox News local 19 explains why the Republican National Convention does not recognize a state’s binding on their delegates, but, in fact, considers them free agents that can vote their conscience or preference.

Swann brought up the issue of the 2008 GOP convention when John McCain ran against Mitt Romney for the nomination. At that convention a delegate did not want to join with the rest of the state and vote for John McCain. Instead he wanted his vote to be cast for Mitt Romney. McCain won Utah with 62 percent of the vote in the Primary.

According to one source, Jennifer Sheehan, Legal Counsel for the RNC, plainly stated in a letter to Nancy Lord, Utah National Committeewoman, several weeks before the convention,

“The RNC does not recognize a state’s binding of national delegates, but considers each delegate a free agent who can vote for whoever they choose.”

and

“The national convention allows delegates to vote for the individual of their choice, regardless of whether the person’s name is officially placed into nomination or not.”

This is all in accordance with Rule 38 of the Republican Party Rules.

According to Ben Swann, “The delegate process was designed to entrust a group of voters with the power to override the popular vote in each state in order to ensure that the best candidate is chosen.

Remember that neither the Democratic Party nor the Republican Party are government agencies. They are private agencies that are more like clubs or as we call each of them, a “party.” So they are only governed so far as the rules that their party dictates.

Fairvote.org also chimed in on the issue, stating:

“For further clarification on the meaning of Rule 38, it is instructive to look to the debate in 1964 when the RNC debated whether to strike the Rule 38 language from a proposed amendment that was adopted that year. The debate begins on page 64 of this source. The RNC voted 59 to 41 to keep the rule in the amendment, noting that it helped to clarify a longstanding practice that a delegate was free to take exception to the roll call, and was free to vote his or her preference. Those who sought to strike the rule feared that its inclusion in the rules would give delegates freedom from both a non-existent legal obligation and a moral obligation to vote according to instructions from their state. However, even these opponents of the rule admitted that there never has been any legal obligation for a delegate to do so.”

So while it is not clear that Mitt Romney will win the nomination of the GOP just yet, despite the numbers promoted in the media, one thing is clear, and that from the RNC and its own attorney, all delegates en route to Tampa this year are not bound by their states to vote for the winner of the state, but by their own consciences.