Delegate Voting for Dummies

[spacehabitats]

I know this may seem like pretty basic stuff, but believe me, people (especially libertarians like me ;)) mess this up ALL THE TIME. Make sure you understand how and why we are going to vote this way -- as a T-E-A-M.

(I will use the district conventions in Iowa as an example but the voting block principle works the same, even for a county convention.)

Hopefully every Iowa delegate on these forums has contacted or been contacted by an RP district coordinator by now.

Anyone interested in becoming a delegate to the Republican National Convention (RNC) should have notified their coordinator and should know if they have been selected by the group to be an RNC delegate candidate.
If not, try to communicate ASAP.

(In Iowa you have a choice of notifying the Chairman of the GOP district convention of your intention to run for RNC delegate OR you can wait until the convention to have someone nominate and second you.)

With 3 delegates and 3 alternates being selected from each district, each district should have a "slate" of 6 confirmed Ron Paul supporters who are ready willing and able to go to St Paul.

Why is this important to know ahead of time?
We need to coordinate our votes.

Unless your district has a clear majority of RP delegates (in which case I guess you could just vote them through as a slate all at once) you will want the voting to be done by a single ballot with each delegate voting for 6 names. The top 3 vote-getters would be the RNC delegates, the next 3 alternates.


If a stray RP delegate shows up who wants to go national but wasn't in on the development of the slate, let him vote for himself and 5 of the slate delegates. (Do NOT try to convince him to vote for ALL six and NOT vote for himself:eek:.)

With planning (and voting as a block) 30% of the delegates could theoretically take all 6 slots! Without planning (and splitting your votes) even a 70% majority could get zilch.

See why it is important to communicate?
Good luck!

[rodo1776]

Bump for most important post on the boards right now. Anyone planning for a convention needs to understand what spacehabitat is offering.

[amy31416]

good info bump.

[spacehabitats]

I am going to bump this again.
I would not have written this except that, I personally did not understand this very basic convention tactic until recently.
I do hope all delegates at least give a quick look over so that they know this technique.

If the chairman or anyone else tries to change to a different voting format, we need to jump on that too. That is when we need to be prepared with objections and counter proposals.


Also Rodo1776 suggested:

"Good stuff spacehabitats!! Good to hear Iowa is organized. You have it down pat.
As a side note you may consider running SHILLS. If you look closely at the Minnesota results last weekend you see where there were 93 people running for three spots in one CD district. So the GOP split up all their votes while the RPers obviously stuck with the slate and won with a minority. I don't know if the RPers ran shills or there were just that many people that ran.
The idea is to have some of your people not on your official slate and not identified as RPers get up and run as well. These people can be solid McCain supporters or whatever SELLS in the convention. Suck votes from the stronger candidates. Get as many people running as possible to split the opponents votes. You can also have everyone sit next to some others and start talking and then say "Hey you are so good I think you would be a great National Delegate why not let me go ahead and nominate you?"
I assume that nominations from the floor are allowable in order to do this.
Anyway good luck to all of you!!"


This is another way to amplify our votes!