Politico has an article over the long weekend on how changes in Republican party rules could leave the nomination undetermined until the convention meets in Tampa. The authors are both connected with a Takoma Park, Maryland, outfit called FairVote, which favors the instant-runoff-ballot (take a look at their website for a definition) and opposes winner-take-all elections by which a plurality winner can prevail. They argue that a longstanding Republican party prohibition of the “unit role” provides a basis for overturning state laws and state Republican party rules which provide for winner-take-all allocation of delegates. Such provisions were common up to and including the 2008 campaign cycle; for the 2012 cycle a new Republican rule allows winner-take-all allocation only for primaries and caucuses held after April 1.
I think the authors are just plain wrong on this point. The “unit rule” which they decry is a rule binding on national convention delegates regardless of how they were elected, not a rule determining which nominees were elected to delegate positions.
Moreover, there are two additional reasons it’s highly unlikely, even given as close a race as Obama-Clinton 2008 or Ford-Reagan 1976, that the contest will continue until the election. One is that media and campaign delegate counts have been shown to be accurate and to stand up under strong pressure: that was the case in 1976. Back then media delegate counts were a new thing—the first one was conducted by CBS’s Martin Plissner in 1968—and no one knew for sure if they were accurate. Since 1976 we know they’re accurate. And if anything candidate delegate counts are even more accurate.
A second reason is that no one has to wait till they get to the convention city to have complete and confidential communication with anyone else in the process. This was the case as recently as 1960, when it was not common practice for politicians to do business over long-distance telephone calls. John Kennedy’s campaign managers thus were not certain he would be nominated on the first ballot, as he was when the roll call finally got to Wyoming. Now we have not only long-distance telephone, but email and texting and Twitter and the Internet (including Politico). To have another brokered, multiple roll call convention, we’d have to ban all those forms of communication. Not going to happen.
