Delegates Unbound

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Delegates Unbound
Basic facts
Type:	501(c)(4)
Founder(s):	Eric O'Keefe, Dane Waters, and A.J. Spiker
Year founded:	2016
Website:	Official website

Delegates Unbound is an organization that sought to convince Republican delegates at the 2016 Republican National Convention that delegates are "not bound to vote for any particular candidate based on primary and caucus results, state party rules, or even state law."

The group is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization and was founded in 2016.

Mission

The website for Delegates Unbound contains the following statement of purpose:

“

Delegates Unbound is a not-for-profit working to bring long term reform to the Republican Party. Our primary focus is on educating delegates that they are unbound and free to vote as they see fit on all matters before the Republican National Convention, including whomever they wish to be the Republican nominee for President.

”

Background

Delegates Unbound was founded in 2016 by Wisconsin political strategist Eric O'Keefe, partially in response to Donald Trump's presidential campaign and potential nomination at the 2016 Republican National Convention. The organization argues that delegates are not required to vote for Trump at the convention—even if they were elected in primaries and caucuses as bound to Trump.

Unbound: The Conscience of a Republican Delegate

The group, drawing from the book Unbound: The Conscience of a Republican Delegate, holds that no delegate can be forced to vote against his or her conscience. According to Delegates Unbound's website, the book "identifies the historical and legal basis for the authority of the delegates attending the convention. The book makes a strong case that delegates are not bound to vote for any particular candidate based on primary and caucus results, state party rules, or even state law. The book documents the nearly 240 instances at past conventions in which delegates have invoked their right to vote their conscience."

Additionally, the group's website lays out the following as key points for its argument in favor of unbound delegates:

“

The language adopted at the 1880 convention, specifically to ensure delegates could not be bound by the unit rule, instructions from the state party, or other methods of binding, have been part of the convention rules for 136 years and remain part of the temporary rules heading into Cleveland as Rule 37(b). There is no language supporting binding in the temporary rules of the convention, which are the only rules that matter. The Republican Party has rejected state laws purporting to bind delegates to primary or caucus outcomes from the beginning, starting with the 1912 convention when the Illinois and Oregon delegations voted contrary to the primary results and in defiance of their state laws. On the single occasion in which the Republican National Convention recognized binding, 1976, it required a rule change to the original 1880 language, and that rule change was promptly removed in 1980 reverting back to the original language. Simply stated, barring any rules changes at the convention, delegates can vote their conscience on the first ballot.

”

Work

"Follow Your Conscience" ad by Unbound Delegates in June 2016

In the weeks leading to the Republican convention, Delegates Unbound began to work together with Courageous Conservatives PAC and Free the Delegates. According to The Washington Post, the three organizations joined together on a national outreach program that utilized an ad campaign as well as grassroots organizing to educate delegates about the convention rules and the proposed conscience clause. Unbound Delegates launched an ad called "Follow Your Conscience" in June 2016, which followed a juxtaposition of former President Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump with an appeal to "follow your conscience."

According to NBC News, Unbound Delegates had promoted the book Unbound: The Conscience of a Republican Delegate by sending 1,400 of the national delegates a link to the book in June 2016. "We are promoting their book because we believe it's the Bible to this issue," said Dane Waters, founder of the Initiative & Referendum Institute.

Leadership

Delegates Unbound is led by co-founders Eric O'Keefe and Dane Waters, and A.J. Spiker.

Noteworthy events

Correll v. Herring

See also: Correll v. Herring

Correll v. Herring et. al. was a case argued before the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in 2016. The case centered on the constitutionality of Virginia’s election laws regarding the binding of political party delegates to a presidential nomination convention. The case was filed on June 24, 2016. On July 11, 2016, Judge Robert Payne issued a memorandum opinion permanently enjoining Virginia from enforcing the section of Virginia election law under challenge.

Delegates Unbound responded in a press release that quoted O'Keefe saying, "The right of delegates to vote their conscience won today."

Impact and the 2016 Republican National Convention

See also: Conscience clause and the Republican National Convention, 2016

Beau Correll, plaintiff in Correll v. Herring, filed the lawsuit at the same time as a movement was taking hold among conservative activists to unbind the delegates to the 2016 Republican National Convention—at least in part to prevent Donald Trump from winning the party’s nomination for president. Some conservatives, such as North Dakota National Committeeman Curly Haugland and National Review staff writer David French, argued that the delegates were, in fact, already unbound at the convention. Others, such as Colorado delegates Kendal Unruh and Guy Short, argued that the convention should pass a rule allowing delegates to vote for a candidate other than the one to whom their state party’s rules bind them if that vote violated their conscience on religious or moral grounds.

One obstacle faced by both approaches to unbinding the delegates was the issue of state laws that require delegates to national conventions to be bound by the results of presidential preference polls (such as primary elections or straw polls). As noted below, almost one-third of the states had language—as of 2016—in their election codes dictating the nuances of how delegates were to be bound at national nominating conventions. The specific problem that these laws posed for the movement to unbind the delegates was that even if national party rules explicitly unbound the delegates (such as through a conscience amendment, for example) or were widely interpreted as to have unbound the delegates, the delegates themselves might still have felt compelled to vote at the convention as bound delegates because of state law.

Payne's favorable ruling, therefore, was expected to work to the advantage of the movement to unbind the delegates. Even though it is only binding in Virginia, the ruling could have helped alleviate the legal concerns of delegates from states with similar laws on the books seeking to vote at the 2016 national convention for a candidate other than the one to whom they were bound by the results of their state's caucus or primary election.

Recent news

The link below is to the most recent stories in a Google news search for the terms 'Delegates Unbound'. These results are automatically generated from Google. Ballotpedia does not curate or endorse these articles.

Delegates Unbound - Google News

See also

• Eric O'Keefe
• Free the Delegates

External links

• Delegates Unbound website
• Delegates Unbound on Facebook
• Delegates Unbound on Twitter