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Since you are not involved in party politics and the convention system, I can cut you some slack. Here’s one link that will educate and give you a bit more realistic view of the system, and it was just posted today.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2880885/posts

I am surprised a person as meticulous as you seem to be, plainly does not recognize how corrupt and rigged the presidential nominating system is, just by keeping up with what happened in Iowa, Virginia, and Florida alone.

Your oblique disparaging references accusing people of which you have no personal knowledge of dishonesty, nuttiness, etc. regarding a subject you have admitted you have no personal experience in, marks you broadly as a name-caller and certainly as a character assassin.

So, just educate yourself on the convention system, and take it from me, participation is the only way to gain real understanding of how the process really works.

Only then will you realize how badly you misunderstand our system of party politics, and how the delegate selection process and convention system, far from being obscure and “backroom” as you think, is in reality a strong, vibrant, exciting, open place for the people who care enough to actually participate to get together and iron out their differences for the purpose of selecting the party’s nominee.

Virginia was not corrupt or rigged, and I resent the slander against my own state’s representatives. A lot of people were upset that their candidates couldn’t do the simple task of collecting signatures, and decided it was part of some nefarious plot.

I will note that we just picked senate candidates for a primary using the identical process, and every candidate was able to meet the thresholds, even those who entered the contest late. The guy I’m supporting had over 17,000 signatures.

I was only upset that Rick Perry’s campaign never sent an e-mail asking for supporters in the state to collect signatures. We had a statewide election during the signature process, all they needed was 100 dedicated volunteers scattered at precincts throughout the state; if each collected 200 signatures from voters showing up at the precinct, that would be 20,000 signatures, well above the 15,000 needed.

Worse, the party already staffs most polling places at election day — so you really just needed to drop off signature forms. We had ONE signature form at my precinct table, and it was for Herman Cain. He already had over 25 signatures when I showed up at 7:15am to vote, he probably ended up with a couple hundred from our precinct alone, since we had almost 1000 people vote republican there.

I can’t speak to what happened in other states, but politics is about organization, and a good organization would have little trouble getting 15,000 signatures in Virginia; we have solid republican committees throughout the state, the state party is ready to help, and we have plenty of republicans.

Heck, Rick Perry actually came to the state RPV meeting in September, DURING the signature collection process. All his die-hard supporters came out for lunch and to hear him speak (I was there with my daughter as well). And guess what — NO signature pages were available, and no request was made to the people there to go collect signatures.

I sent e-mails to Perry, Santorum and Gingrich’s campaigns, asking them if they wanted help collecting signatures, and no campaign ever responded. I think they all thought they had it taken care of.

The process isn’t easy, but it is easy to understand, and the rules were clear and easy to follow. Collect 10,000 valid signatures, and you are on the ballot. Collect 15,000 signatures and we’ll assume you won’t get more than 1/3rd rejected, so you’ll be on the ballot (we’ve NEVER had more than 1/3rd of the signatures found to be bad, so the rule makes sense).

As to your general concern about the process being rigged, I don’t see how, even if true, it would make what is being discussed in this thread any more palatable.

I’ll discuss Nevada specifically in another post.

Nevada picks it's delegates by convention. The critical conventions are the local nominating conventions, held February 4, 2012. The state delegates eventually chosen for the RNConvention are bound by rule to vote as specified at this first round of caucuses

These were certified by the state party. :

Nevada Caucus - February 4, 2012 -100% reporting (1800/1800)
Romney 50.0% 16,486 Gingrich 21.1% 6,956 Paul 18.7% 6,175 Santorum 9.9% 3,277

The state party rules indicate that for the 1st ballot at the RNConvention, the delegates are bound by the presidential preference vote taken at the precincts, calculated proportionally based on the votes for the candidates still in the race. That is key, because it means that at the state convention, they re-calculated the delegate selection with only the Romney and Paul votes.

The personal preferences of the selected delegates does not matter for the 1st ballot. The Paul state director insists that their delegates will follow the rules, which means that for the 1st ballot, they will cast 20 votes for Romney, and 8 for Paul (proportional results). The previous numbers were Romney 14, Gingrich 6, Paul 5, Santorum 3.

The suggestion of this article is that somehow Paul now has 22 votes at the convention -- that is clearly not true, at least not for the 1st ballot.

However, you have to ask how, given that at each step, the delegates are chosen by winners at the previous step, Paul people managed to do so well. Partly, I'm sure it's just that they kept showing up. But it is also clear that at the original precinct level, a lot of paul supporters got elected to the next level by people who supported other candidates, and thought they were picking delegates who supported the same candidate. That is where the "misleading" comes in.

We have reports from other caucuses where sample ballots were circulated with the names of candidates (Romney, Santorum) listed, but which actually had mostly Ron Paul delegates on the ballot. Some have been so blatant that the state committees are seriously considering throwing out the results because of the misleading nature. In Nevada, it simply appears that they took over all the party positions, which gave them the ability to vote their own people into the delegate slots

Since they have to vote for Romney anyway, Romney didn't care. It sucks for the supporters of Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich who were active in state politics, who wanted a chance to go to a convention, who showed up at all the caucuses, got elected at the precinct level, and then got shut out at the state by the Ron Paul folks. But if they don't like it, they should take back their party from the Paul people.