Are the GOP rules really rigged against Donald Trump?

CNBC ^ | 2016 April 25 | Bruce Abramson and Jeff Ballabon

[Political Junkie Too]

I don't think I posited anything that warrants such a dismissive tone. You won't win any friends by leading with a jab.

Again, I cited a cause from the revolution which seems to be reappearing: the scheduling of public necessities at inconvenient times to influence outcomes. Do you dispute this when other more accessible options exist in modern times?

Are you putting the call to vote in a state primary on the same par as risking one's life in the overthrow of a government? That wasn't my intention. I don't think people expect their party to demand LIVES, FORTUNES, SACRED HONOR just to participate in the electoral process, but they do expect their party to be receptive of the needs of its constituency to be able to participate. Even a Saturday afternoon caucus would have been more accessible than a Tuesday night one, if it had to be a caucus in the first place.

-PJ

[HLPhat]

>>Your associate of Tea Party anything with Cruz is cute

Oh, I'm pretty sure I've seen enough of the Tea Party in Colorado and elsewhere to be able to differentiate between a cup of Earl Grey and the RINO's who've tried to surf in it.

But you go ahead and keep on guzzling that Alex Jones viintage "Bush blew up the towers" Conspirakoolaid along with the Reality TeeVee Star.

And we'll laugh at you when the subject comes up our precinct classrooms, and garages, and living rooms... while keeping the Framework of the Republic wobbling along atop our grass roots.

[HLPhat]

>>I don’t think.

Uhuh.

LIVES FORTUNES AND SACRED HONOR { except if you’ve got kids to put to bed, or jobs, or have to sleep for the graveyard shift }

Just doesn’t mean the same thing, DOES IT.

[Gaffer]

Never once in all my years here have I ever endorsed the “Bush Blew up the Towers” meme. It is insulting that you even express that thought, frankly.

Earl Grey drinkers and RINOs aren’t the only thing permeating all these ‘tea party’ wannabe groups.

http://rightwingnews.com/john-hawkins/50-million-tubes-17-conservative-pacs-spending-money/

You have a good laugh in your little high school “PRECINCT” classrooms. It won’t make a damn bit of difference bcause your ‘grass roots’ diversions are party placations and contributions to the ‘tea party’ mantra are being siphoned away by scammers.

[Mechanicos]

Garbage if a vote had been held Trump would have won. #Nevertrump negated the people in Colorado and nothing you say rebuts the fact of the outcome.

[Political Junkie Too]

**plonk**

-PJ

[stocksthatgoup]

The rules suck

[HLPhat]

How do we earn this?

Among other things - BY SHOWING UP whenever and wherever required.

 

It is for us the living, rather,
to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they
who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated
to the great task remaining before us
 
that from these honored dead we take increased devotion
to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion

THAT WE HERE HIGHLY RESOLVE
THAT THESE

that this nation, under God,
shall have a new birth of freedom

and that government of the people, by the people, for the people,
shall not perish from the earth.

--Abraham Lincoln, Gettysberg

November 19, 1863

Trump [and Cruz] is just the beginning - We're the People, and we'll be back.

Onward and Upward!

 

[SunkenCiv]

---

President Hillary is totally unacceptable!
Posted April 23, 2016 at 1:02:08 PM PDT by Jim Robinson

If you are a NeverTrump type person, you are working against our purposes on FR, so please opus out now and log off and let us carry on with our mission in peace.

Continue insulting us with 24/7 anti-Trump diatribes and insults, your opus will be assumed.

We will unite behind our nominee and we will win this coming election (with or without you) and we will get a handle on this divided forum very soon.

Hope you understand my position.

By the way, Cruz's campaign still refuses to answer the question whether or not Cruz will support Trump if he's the nominee. He's taking the GOPe route of preferring Hillary over Trump. This is also totally unacceptable.

---

[Albion Wilde]

When people realize that a system has become dysfunctional, they may use a shopworn term like “not fair” to characterize it. Trump has been saying it is “not fair” not to himself, but on behalf of the voiceless voters he believes he represents — that the majority in CO who voted will not be represented on the second ballot and that the majority of CO voters were not even given a chance to vote becasue of the canceled primary.

This is only one of the many ways in which the system has grown dysfunctional over the years to the point that the 2000 election had to be decided by the SCOTUS. The electoral system across the various stateshas become a patchwork of caucuses vs primaries, proportional vs winner-take-all, open vs. closed, early vs late, and single day vs. early voting or absentee voting. The system evolved since the days when delegates needed to ride on horseback to a convention, stay there until a nomination was concluded without benefit of telephones, newspapers or rapid communications.

The U.S. struggles with other imbalance issues such as states like Rhode Island having the same number of Senators as states like Texas and California, and situations such as the “one “man”, one vote” fiction that would nobly count the vote of an individual with properties, investments, employees and charity donations the same as a chronically unemployed drug abuser with several illegitimate children on welfare.

Incremental improvements could address the patchwork effects, plus the influence of instantaneous digital communications balanced against the warnings by the Founders against a purely popular democracy.

[HLPhat]

>>Garbage if a vote had been held Trump would have won.

I showed up and voted.

Saw the little piece of paper with the delegate names I wrote on it go into the hat and saw it get counted with my own two eyes.

Simple. Transparent. I thought it was pretty cool.

YMMV.

[exDemMom]

Not even that, frankly. It isn't uncommon for the defendant in a paternity lawsuit (e.g., for child support, etc.) to require the mother to conclusively she is, indeed, the mother. IOW proof by DNA.

And sometimes, the DNA isn't even clear on that. I saw a show about a woman who was being charged with fraud for claiming to be the mother of kids whose DNA did not match hers. Even when she produced the records from the hospital showing that she had, in fact, given birth to the children, the judge did not believe her. It took a genetics expert to finally figure that one out. The woman was a chimera, a product of two embryos that had fused. Her blood was composed of cells originating from one embryo, and her ovaries had originated from the other embryo. Thus, testing the DNA from her blood did not show she was the mother.

Anyway, this has little to do with the topic... but you reminded me of it.

[exDemMom]

Someone actually posted the Colorado “rules” to me a week or so ago, and they were as I described: rules that only a lawyer could love.

In addition, even members of the CO GOP are now saying that the delegate selection was irregular. They are discussing going to a primary system, since this whole caucus and its results turned out to be a fiasco.

Once upon a time, I lived in CA and was active in the Republican party there. I think it was really easy to become a delegate: the Republican party sent me an invitation, and for (IIRC) $2000, I could have gone to the state convention and become a delegate. I chose not to... I didn’t really have $2000 to spare.

[exDemMom]

The Reality TeeVee Star’s fans got their arses handed to them by the grass roots Tea Party folks in Colorado.

Seriously?

In polls, Colorado Republican voters support Trump over any other candidate. The caucuses are a sampling of the voters. As such, the distribution of candidate support among members of the caucus should match the distribution of candidate supporters among the general population, within a margin of error. Statistically, there is absolutely no way a caucus randomly selected from among the voters would not contain at least a few supporters of the front-running candidate. Ergo, the Colorado caucus was extremely irregular, indicating that some kind of cheating occurred.

So, while you are patting yourself on the back about how stupid Trump supporters are as compared to Cruz supporters, you make it painfully obvious that you do not understand the first thing about the statistics of random sampling.

There are enough stories about how ballots were misprinted and Trump supporters who showed up to be delegates found that their names were not listed on the rosters to see perfectly well how the actual result of the caucus deviated so far from the expected result. The Cruz machine cheated.

It's all good, though. As Trump sails on to pick up the lion's share of delegates through a real election today, we can contemplate how Cruz showed us the meaning of "Pyrrhic victory."

[jersey117]

The GOP is not hiding the fact that they’re trying to use the system to stop him. They are definitely using the system and the party insiders to rig it. It’s disgraceful.

[HLPhat]

>> I chose not to... I didn’t really have $2000 to spare.

There was a minimal fee involved. IIRC it was <20 dollars. There was a short discussion regarding if anyone would have a problem covering it, and if so we’d pass the hat.

Nobody had an issue.

[HLPhat]

It's not "The Rules", but describes all I needed to know about the process to show up and participate.

{ shrug } 
===========================

REPUBLICANS:

Republicans attending a caucus night event will elect a chair, secretary and teller. Then caucus attendees will elect delegates and alternates to attend the county assembly (or higher assembly, based on county party by laws).

There will not be a presidential straw poll. [Well, we had one anyhow in our classroom :-P]

That's because the Republican National Committee mandated the vote would have to be binding vote.

The Colorado Republican Party "elected to eliminate the straw poll after following an RNC rule change that would have forced the Colorado GOP to bind delegates to the result. Binding delegates to a straw poll process that lacks the full integrity of a true primary election would be a mistake," according to Colorado GOP Chairman Steve House.

"Colorado Republicans continue to have the opportunity to make their voice heard in the presidential race by electing delegates to higher assemblies," House said.

Learn more on the Colorado GOP's Facebook page. Find your caucus location.

Things to know

Voters who are not registered as Democrats or Republicans may attend as observers, but they will not be allowed to vote.

The caucus meetings begin at 7 p.m. Voters may want to go early because voter registrations will be checked.

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/politics/how-the-colorado-caucus-system-works-and-find-your-republican-caucus-and-democratic-caucus-location

[exDemMom]

EXCLUSIVE: Colorado County GOP Chair: Errors with Ted Cruz’s Delegate Win, Might Need Do-Over

Excerpt: [Boulder County chairwoman Peg Cage] Cage sent an email expressing her concerns to fellow party chairs last Tuesday.

“Changing the process by which we get to counting votes won’t change the perception of fraud,” Cage wrote. “There were problems with the election in Colorado Springs:

• Many people who had filed their Intent to Run for National Delegate forms were not put on a ballot.
• Clerical errors created the perception of fraud (duplicate and omitted names and numbers)
• Despite calls for unity by elected party officials, one candidate was perceived to have been favored
• Ballot counting was perceived to have been done in secret, by the Secretary of State (in his orange Cruz shirt) on equipment from the county where he was the County Clerk.”

Cage was referring to Secretary of State Wayne Williams, who showed up to the caucus in an orange Ted Cruz shirt and was photographed with Cruz election lawyer David Sawyer in a Facebook photo: [omitted photo that shows Sawyer clearly wearing a Cruz campaign shirt].

---------------------------

As I said before, the result that happened is not statistically possible if the caucus were actually a random sampling of voters, instead of an inside job.

BTW, the $2000 I would have had to pay to attend the state convention was in California, not CO. Different process.

[HLPhat]

[Boulder County chairwoman Peg Cage]

Are you aware The People’s Republic of Boulderistan
is Colorado’s equivalent to Berkeley?

I’ll stick with what I’ve seen with my own eyes.

YMMV.

[HLPhat]

>>ballots were misprinted

How does  a blank sheet of paper get "misprinted"?

Here's how I SAW it work: 

* The names of the folks who volunteered to be a delegate were written on the blackboard. 

* We heard from each volunteer a bit about who they were, the issues they thought important, and who they'd probably support for POTUS.

* Then everybody wrote their choice down on a blank scrap of paper and the scraps were gathered up and counted. (same process as for straw poll where Cruz got 22 to Trump's 6 votes)

>>The Cruz machine cheated.

If that's true then you should be able to produce the names of the cheaters and  EVIDENCE that they cheated. 

>>Trump supporters who showed up to be delegates found that their names were not listed on the rosters

Because they weren't REGISTERED AS REPUBLICAN VOTERS?