Well, the 2016 road to the White House just keeps getting more interesting.
I have spent considerable time in my column trying to explain the very convoluted primary process. Without a doubt having different rules in each state and often different rules for the two parties makes the whole route to the nomination very confusing.
Over the last week, since Donald Trump has made mistakes that finally appear to be having consequences for his voter turnout, all attention has turned to the possibility of a "floor flight" or a "brokered convention."
I thought I would take this week to explain how the brokered convention works. I am going to focus on the Republican Party because the delegate process for the GOP works a bit differently than for the Democratic Party.
First of all, there was always going to be a convention for the GOP nominee but, in most cases, the convention is a celebration with a known nominee. In other words, the nominee is already chosen because they have received more than 50 per cent of the delegates through the state-by-state primary process. The nominee needs 1,237 pledged delegates in order to win.
So let's go back a bit and review what happens.
States, over the course of many months, have been voting in a primary/caucus process. Through each of these processes, states determine two things: the delegates who will attend the convention and the candidate they will vote for. Some states designate their delegates proportionately and some designate a "winner-take-all" approach (and some combine the two).
So for ease of explanation let's walk through an imaginary scenario.
Let us say that we have three potential nominees: Mary, Tom and Sue.
In State A, the rules say that the votes must be proportioned. If Mary wins 39 percent of the votes she will receive 39 per cent of the delegates. They will be pledged to her. If Tom gets 31 per cent he will get 31 per cent of the delegates.
This would leave 30 per cent for Sue.
In State B, the rule says that "winner-takes-all," so even though no one got more than 50 per cent, Mary would get all the pledged delegates.
So far the delegate count for the GOP is (and I am using the New York Times 2016 Delegate Count and Primary Results site): Trump 742, Cruz 505, Kasich 143 and Rubio 171. Remember that Rubio won delegates before he dropped out and those delegates are still pledged to him.
In fact, each state in which Rubio won delegates has different rules for how those delegates get released to vote at the convention.
As you can see, Trump is still a distance away from the 1,237 "magic number" and assuming he doesn't reach that number before the convention in Cleveland in July, the GOP will be in for a "floor fight."
The process at the convention is to have a series of ballots where delegates vote until there is a winner. The first round ballot is likely to produce a result similar to the numbers going into the convention. Delegates will vote for the delegate to whom they are pledged. Of course, it is possible that Rubio will release his delegates before the convention and they will vote for a different nominee.
Those 171 delegates could be important. However, there are rules in each state that govern when delegates can be released and so it is difficult to predict when the Rubio delegates will become important.
At the end of the first or second ballot (depending on state rules) delegates will be released from their pledge and given the option to vote for whomever they want.
And here, all bets are off... at this point the nomination will come down to how the individual delegates decide to vote. Right now you will hear that all of the campaigns are "working the delegates" to woo them to their side.
There is one other wrench that might be thrown into the works... a nominee may emerge from the floor. If the ballot process seems to be unending and no nominee is selected it is possible that a popular Republican could launch a challenge right at the convention and step forward to unite the party.
There has been a lot of talk about this possibility but GOP rules currently state that a nominee must have won a majority of delegates in at least eight states.
So for a nominee to come from the floor would require a change in the rules.
Whatever happens we are in for a very contentious convention...
