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Rule 9 and the 2016 presidential election
 Date: November 8, 2016 |
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Note: the information on this page was current as of the 2016 presidential election.
In early August 2016, discussions in media and political circles began to emerge about an obscure rule of the Republican Party called Rule 9, which describes the procedures the party must follow in the event that its presidential nominee drops out of the race before the general election in November. The catalysts for these discussions were calls from Republican activists for the party's nominee, Donald Trump, to step down. Some members of the party even advocated using Rule 9 to force Trump to step down. Below, Ballotpedia breaks down the ins and outs of Rule 9.
What is Rule 9?
Rule 9 is an official rule of the Rules of the Republican Party, which are the guidelines that govern the internal workings of the Republican National Committee, the Republican presidential nomination process, and the Republican National Convention. The rules are amended every four years by the national convention Rules Committee and approved by the delegates to the national convention. The rules were last amended on July 14, 2016, and approved on July 18, 2016. At the July 14 meeting, the Rules Committee made no changes to Rule 9, which was already a part of the official rules.
What does Rule 9 do?
Rule 9 grants the Republican National Committee the authority to find a replacement nominee in the event that its presidential or vice presidential nominee dies or drops out of the race in between the national convention and the general election. It says that if a Republican candidate for president or vice president leaves the race due to “death, declination, or otherwise” after the national convention, the Republican National Committee (RNC) has the authority to fill a vacancy by a majority vote of its 168 members or by reconvening the national convention.
The logistics and details of what would happen if the RNC attempted to reconvene the national convention are unknown, but the basic idea is that the right to fill the vacancy would be handed over to the 2,472 delegates of the national convention.
The details of what would happen if the RNC chose to fill a vacancy by a majority vote of its membership, however, are spelled out clearly in the text of Rule 9. It would work like this:
- All 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands have three members who sit on the Republican National Committee: a state chair, a national committeeman, and a national committeewoman.
- Those three individuals would be entitled to cast the same number of votes for the replacement nominee as their state or territory was entitled to at the national convention. So, for example, California’s three members on the RNC would be responsible for casting 172 votes, while Alaska’s three members would have 28 votes.
- What would happen if California’s three members disagreed on how to cast their state’s 172 votes? Rule 9 says that the state’s votes would be “divided up equally,” and that includes fractions. In other words, each RNC member from California would get 57.3 votes.
- For a candidate to be elected to fill a vacancy, he or she would need to receive a majority of the 2,472 votes up for grabs, which is 1,237.
According to Rule 8(b), the chair of the RNC must call a meeting for the purpose of filling a vacancy on the national ticket, and he or she must give a minimum of five days notice to the committee members (the minimum is ten days for other matters). Another option would be for 16 members of the RNC, "representing no fewer than sixteen (16) states," to file a petition to the RNC chairman requesting a meeting. The chairman would then have ten days from the receipt of the petition to call a meeting. The date of the meeting could be "not later than twenty (20) days or earlier than ten (10) days from the date of the call."
Rule 9 text
The full text of Rule 9 can be read below.
| Filling Vacancies in Nominations:
(a) The Republican National Committee is hereby authorized and empowered to fill any and all vacancies which may occur by reason of death, declination, or otherwise of the Republican candidate for President of the United States or the Republican candidate for Vice President of the United States, as nominated by the national convention, or the Republican National Committee may reconvene the national convention for the purpose of filling any such vacancies. (b) In voting under this rule, the Republican National Committee members representing any state shall be entitled to cast the same number of votes as said state was entitled to cast at the national convention. (c) In the event that the members of the Republican National Committee from any state shall not be in agreement in the casting of votes hereunder, the votes of such state shall be divided equally, including fractional votes, among the members of the Republican National Committee present or voting by proxy. (d) No candidate shall be chosen to fill any such vacancy except upon receiving a majority of the votes entitled to be cast in the election. |
Has Rule 9 ever been used before?
No. In fact, the last time any nominee had to be replaced before the general election was in 1972 when the Democratic vice presidential nominee Thomas Eagleton dropped out. Democrats, who have their own internal rules on dealing with this problem, had to scramble to find a replacement before the November election.
Could Rule 9 be used to remove a nominee?
There are two schools of thought on this. One says no; the other says maybe. It ultimately comes down to a matter of interpretation, and what the rule actually says is less important than what a majority of the RNC's members interpret it to say. At the center of the debate about Rule 9 are varying interpretations of the word "otherwise" in the rule's text: "The Republican National Committee is hereby authorized and empowered to fill any and all vacancies which may occur by reason of death, declination, or otherwise [emphasis added] of the Republican candidate for President of the United States or the Republican candidate for Vice President of the United States."
Josh Putnam, a political scientist at the University of Georgia and expert on party rules, wrote that the rule is strictly focused on filling vacancies. He says:[1]
| “ | Rule 9 is about filling vacancies not creating them. Those who have skipped over the title of the rule and jumped right to 'death, declination, or otherwise' have missed the point of the rule. In doing that, most have put entirely too much emphasis on that 'otherwise' condition for causing a vacancy.
But again, the intent of the rule is to fill any vacancies in the event that a nominee dies, declines the nomination or falls somewhere in between (neither dead nor able to decline the nomination). That is the intent of 'otherwise'. It fills in that gap between those two bookends.[2] |
” |
This interpretation is shared by rules expert and RNC member Morton Blackwell of Virginia, who has said that such readings of Rule 9 are “patently absurd” and “a lot of nonsense.”[3]
On the other hand, some Republican activists opposed to Trump's candidacy, argued that the word "otherwise" in Rule 9's text could give the party the authority to remove the nominee. Former New Hampshire Senator Gordon Humphrey, for example, wrote a letter to New Hampshire's representatives on the RNC, saying,[4]
| “ | The RNC would not be powerless if a candidate fell into a coma from which recovery was uncertain. In that circumstance, the RNC would act under a duty to the Party and a moral duty to the nation to replace the nominee. Likewise, when a candidate repeatedly evidences unsoundness of mind, the RNC has a duty to act. The time is now. ... I am aware that Rule 9 is not explicit about replacing a nominee who is mentally or physically disabled, but the word 'otherwise' surely was meant to cover all bases over above 'death' and declination.'[2] | ” |
Thomas Balch, a professional parliamentarian, wrote an opinion for the conservative anti-Trump group, Free the Delegates, making a similar argument. He said:[3]
| “ | Additional cases could be posited in which the majority of the RNC might interpret 'other' circumstances effectively to cause a vacancy. Suppose the nominee were to be indicted for shooting people in the street, or were to give aid and comfort to an enemy nation amounting to treason. Perhaps acting so fundamentally at variance with party principles as to make the candidate functionally no longer representative of the party could be deemed to qualify. The critical point is this: because the word 'otherwise' is ambiguous and not elsewhere defined, the majority of the RNC is entitled to interpret and decide what it encompasses, and may then validly apply that interpretation in excising its authority to fill the vacancy it thereby deems to exist.[2] | ” |
Could the RNC amend Rule 9?
Yes. Technically, the RNC could amend Rule 9 however it wished, but doing so would be difficult. Rule 12 of the Rules of the Republican Party gives the RNC the authority to amend rules 1-11 and 13-25 in between the party's quadrennial national conventions. The amending process laid out by Rule 12 works as follows: the amendment is first to be considered by the RNC’s Standing Committee on Rules, a 56-member body, which is required to pass the amendment by a majority vote (29 out of 56). Next, the RNC itself must approve the amendment by a three-fourths vote of its entire membership (84 out of 112). The amendment, if approved, then goes into effect 30 days later. Rule 12 limits the amount of time that the RNC can amend the rules to a window that extends to two years after the close of the national convention. Examples of how the RNC has used Rule 12 in the past can be read about here.
Rule 12 text
The full text of Rule 12 can be read below.
| Amendments:
The Republican National Committee may, by three-fourths (3/4) vote of its entire membership, amend Rule Nos. 1-11 and 13-25. Any such amendment shall be considered by the Republican National Committee only if it was passed by a majority vote of the Standing Committee on Rules after having been submitted in writing at least ten (10) days in advance of its consideration by the Republican National Committee and shall take effect thirty (30) days after adoption. No such amendment shall be adopted after September 30, 2018. |
See also
- State laws and party rules on replacing a presidential nominee
- Rule 12 and the 2016 Republican National Convention
- Presidential candidates, 2016
- Republican National Convention rules, 2016
- Ballot access for presidential candidates
- Presidential election, 2016
Footnotes
- ↑ FrontloadingHQ, "Filling Nomination Vacancies That Don't Exist," August 3, 2016
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 The Hill, "GOP rules expert: Not too late for RNC to recall Trump," August 19, 2016
- ↑ New Hampshire Public Radio, "Humphrey Urges RNC to Replace Trump with Candidate 'Of Sound Mind,'" August 10, 2016
