The great confusion: rules and the Republican National Convention
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 2016 Republican National Convention | |
July 18-21, 2016 Location Cleveland, Ohio | |
President Donald Trump Vice President Mike Pence | |
2016 Convention Rules • Rule 12 • Rule 16 • Rule 40 • Conscience clause • Brokered conventions • RNC Rules Committee • Platform and Platform Committee • RNC Standing Committee on Rules • Republican National Committee | |
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This article covering the 2016 presidential election was written outside the scope of Ballotpedia's encyclopedic coverage and does not fall under our neutrality policy or style guidelines. It is preserved as it was originally written. For our encyclopedic coverage of the 2016 election, click here.
July 21, 2016
By Charles Aull and Jim Barnes
Rules played an outsized role in this year’s Republican presidential nominating process. Leading up to the convention, a movement picked up steam seeking to use the rules, at least in part, to deny Donald Trump the nomination. Thursday night saw a contentious Rules Committee meeting that lasted for almost 16 hours. And Monday evening witnessed a widely publicized fight on the convention floor over accepting the rules package.
As debates over the rules unfolded throughout the convention, miscommunication and confusion between the delegates, the Republican National Committee, and the Trump campaign appear to have been common themes.
Nowhere was this on display as much as on Tuesday night when the convention body formally nominated Trump as the party’s presidential nominee.
District of Columbia delegate Christian Berle, for example, told us that he came to Cleveland to cast his vote for Ohio Governor John Kasich, who won 35 percent of the vote in the District’s March caucuses. But Berle’s vote, along with the votes of eight other Kasich delegates from D.C., went to Trump, who won 13 percent of the vote in the D.C. caucuses.
The official reason for this has to do with a complex intersection of national and state party rules. National party rules required delegates to be bound by the results of their state’s primary election or caucus. But state party rules dictate the details of how the delegates are bound, such as what happens if a candidate drops out or if only one candidate’s name is placed in nomination at the convention. National party rules require those state rules to be followed during the roll call vote.
The D.C. GOP had allocated and bound its delegates in accordance with the results of the district caucuses on March 12: 10 for Marco Rubio and nine for Kasich. But the D.C. GOP included a rule in its official bylaws and allocation plan that it submitted to the RNC last year stating, “[I]f only one candidate’s name is placed in nomination at the Republican National Convention, all delegates shall be bound to vote for such candidate on the first ballot provided that the candidate received votes in the DC presidential preference poll.” That one rule is what caused the District’s 19 votes to go to Trump.
| Washington, D.C. Republican Caucus, 2016 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Candidate | Vote % | Votes | Delegates | |
 Marco Rubio |
37.3% | 1,059 | 10 | |
| John Kasich | 35.5% | 1,009 | 9 | |
| Donald Trump | 13.8% | 391 | 0 | |
| Ted Cruz | 12.4% | 351 | 0 | |
| Other | 1% | 29 | 0 | |
| Totals | 2,839 | 19 | ||
| Source: The New York Times and Politico | ||||
Bob Kabel—a former chairman of the D.C. GOP, national committeeman, and member of the 2016 convention Rules Committee—explained that the D.C. rules are contradictory and that his delegation had been in talks “all the way up the political ladder” with the RNC and the Trump campaign over how to interpret them. The contradiction that he pointed out concerns the existence of the D.C. party rule mentioned above and another party rule that says, “The DC Delegation to the Republican National Convention shall be bound through the first ballot to vote proportionally in accordance with the outcome of the District of Columbia Convention.”
Kabel said that it was the D.C. delegation’s understanding up until Tuesday that all parties involved had agreed that the D.C. delegates would cast 10 votes for Rubio and nine votes for Kasich. The Trump campaign, he noted, was fine with the arrangement, especially since Trump had secured the 1,237 votes needed to win the nomination without D.C.’s 19 votes. The sudden reversal on the convention floor during the roll call vote “blindsided” the delegation, Kabel told Ballotpedia, but he emphasized that the root cause was not maliciousness but rather “miscommunication.”
When we asked RNC spokesperson Sean Spicer about the miscommunication with the D.C. delegation, he said, "My point would be that the D.C. rules were pretty clear. Rules are what they are. All we are doing is applying the state rules at the national convention."
D.C. was not the only delegation on the convention floor Tuesday night that felt “blindsided.” The Utah delegation had come to Cleveland prepared to cast 40 votes for Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who won the state’s caucuses with almost 70 percent of the vote. All 40 of those votes, however, ended up going to Trump, who came in third in the Utah caucuses with about 14 percent.
| Utah Republican Caucus, 2016 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Candidate | Vote % | Votes | Delegates | |
|
Ted Cruz |
69.2% | 122,567 | 40 | |
| John Kasich | 16.8% | 29,773 | 0 | |
| Donald Trump | 14% | 24,864 | 0 | |
| Totals | 177,204 | 40 | ||
| Source: The New York Times and CNN | ||||
Utah delegate Peter Greathouse said, “We came here with the understanding [Cruz] was still a candidate and that we’d be voting for him. We were told he was still a candidate.”
But Greathouse added that before the Cruz delegates set off for Cleveland, they wondered about their status: “The question arose, are we bound to him or not?”
Greathouse said that he and other Cruz delegates assumed that Cruz’s name would be put in nomination at the convention, rendering a state party rule that delegates can not vote for a candidate who is not a candidate at the national convention a non-issue. Greathouse said that the Cruz delegates from Utah submitted the requisite signatures to have the Texan nominated, and they assumed that other states that Cruz had won in the nominating process were going to do the same. Under the rules of the 2016 Republican National Convention, a candidate needed to have captured a majority of delegates in eight states.
Greathouse said that delegates were aware of the state party rule that meant the entire delegation might be committed to Trump if he was the only candidate nominated, but they just assumed Cruz was also going to be nominated. He added, “I’ve already been told there will be a movement to try to change it [the state party rule].”
Jordan Hess, another Cruz delegate from Utah, explained the confusion over the first ballot vote as a “miscommunication with the delegates.” He added, “I came here to cast my vote for Sen. Ted Cruz and it’s sad that my vote will be recorded for Donald Trump.”
Hess said there wasn’t a real understanding of the implications of the state party rule that only allowed Utah delegates to cast votes for candidates who were formally nominated. “I wish we had been aware of that rule.”
Hess said, “Some people were upset because they were for Cruz, but it is what it is. It is the rule.”
Confusion and miscommunication also plagued the Alaska delegation. On the convention floor Tuesday night, Alaska reported 11 votes for Trump, 12 for Cruz, and five for Rubio—the same as Alaska’s original allocation as dictated by the results of its March 1 caucuses. But the convention secretary recorded 28 votes for Trump. A challenge from the Alaska delegation was overridden.
| Alaska Republican Caucus, 2016 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Candidate | Vote % | Votes | Delegates | |
|
Ted Cruz |
36.4% | 7,973 | 12 | |
| Donald Trump | 33.5% | 7,346 | 11 | |
| Marco Rubio | 15.1% | 3,318 | 5 | |
| Ben Carson | 10.9% | 2,401 | 0 | |
| John Kasich | 4.1% | 892 | 0 | |
| Other | 0% | 0 | 0 | |
| Totals | 21,930 | 28 | ||
| Source: CNN and The New York Times | ||||
As with Utah and D.C., the problem that Alaska’s delegates ran into was a rule the Alaska GOP included in its original 2016 delegate allocation plan, which states, “If a Qualified Presidential Candidate drops out prior to the Republican State Convention, the percentage of national delegates pledged to that candidate shall be reapportioned among the Qualified Presidential Candidates.”
Dave Donley—the Alaska delegate who rushed to the front of the stage on Tuesday night and shouted for recognition to protest the RNC secretary’s declaration that all of Alaska’s delegates would be allocated to Donald Trump—said, “We felt strongly we had to have our vote.”
Donley stressed that everyone in the delegation agreed that their votes should be divided among Cruz, Trump, and Rubio as they were allocated in the caucuses and at the state party convention. Donley stated that at the state convention this year, the party amended its state party rule that allocated convention delegates in order to permit the Alaska delegates to cast their votes for the candidates who captured votes in the caucuses. But confusion existed over whether the actions of the Alaska state party convention this year had any bearings on the allocation plan the state party submitted to the Republican National Committee for its approval last year.
Donley, an attorney who served 16 years in the Alaska State Legislature, added that the state party consulted the RNC legal office back in the spring—after receiving a letter from the Rubio campaign that said he wanted to retain his Alaska delegates—about what they should do. Donley said that RNC officials said they should follow Rubio’s wishes. “They changed their opinion without telling us,” said Donley. “They totally bushwhacked us.” He added, “The RNC needs to clean up its act.”
A Cruz delegate, Donley said he had discussed with his wife the possibility of not making the long and expensive trip to Cleveland and letting an alternate delegate take his place. This trip is “the longest I’ve been away from my children,” he noted. “My wife said, ‘It’s your duty to vote for the candidate Alaskans voted for.’”
Donley said, “We should just get rid of [Alaska’s reapportionment rule].” Casey Dschaak, another Cruz delegate from Alaska, concurred: “It’s just something we’ve got to change at the state level.”
About a dozen delegations on Tuesday night ended up casting votes that differed from how their delegates were originally allocated and bound (see below). But not all of them experienced the level of confusion that D.C., Utah, and Alaska did.
The Iowa delegation saw it coming. In June, Eric Rosenthal, the chairman of the Iowa Republican State Convention Nominating Committee, wrote an op-ed in a local Iowa paper titled, “All Iowa Republican National Delegates will vote for Donald Trump.” This was despite the fact that in the Iowa caucuses last February, Cruz won eight delegates, Trump and Rubio won seven each, Ben Carson won three, and Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, and Rand Paul won one delegate each. Rosenthal noted that the Iowa GOP had included in its bylaws a new rule for 2016, stating, “[I]f only one candidate’s name is placed in nomination at the Republican National Convention, all delegates shall be bound to vote for such candidate on the first ballot provided that the candidate received votes in the Iowa Caucuses.”
“Mr. Trump will be the only candidate nominated, therefore, all 30 delegate votes will be voted for him,” wrote Rosenthal.
| Iowa Republican Caucus, 2016 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Candidate | Vote % | Votes | Delegates | |
|
Ted Cruz |
27.7% | 51,666 | 8 | |
| Donald Trump | 24.3% | 45,427 | 7 | |
| Marco Rubio | 23.1% | 43,165 | 7 | |
| Ben Carson | 9.3% | 17,395 | 3 | |
| Rand Paul | 4.5% | 8,481 | 1 | |
| Jeb Bush | 2.8% | 5,238 | 1 | |
| Carly Fiorina | 1.9% | 3,485 | 1 | |
| John Kasich | 1.9% | 3,474 | 1 | |
| Mike Huckabee | 1.8% | 3,345 | 1 | |
| Chris Christie | 1.8% | 3,284 | 0 | |
| Rick Santorum | 1% | 1,783 | 0 | |
| Totals | 186,743 | 30 | ||
| Source: The Des Moines Register, "Iowa Caucus Results" | ||||
In Cleveland, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad echoed Rosenthal’s sentiments and defended the state party rule. “It’s an improved rule over what we had in the past,” Branstad told Ballotpedia. The Iowa governor was referring to the situation four years ago, when then-Rep. Ron Paul finished third in the Iowa GOP presidential caucuses, but through the determination of his Iowa supporters was able to capture a majority of the state delegation that was sent to the 2012 Republican convention in Tampa, Florida.
Branstad said having a third-place candidate end up with a majority of the state’s convention delegates—someone who didn’t end up as the party’s nominee—was an awkward situation that led to criticism of the caucus process, potentially undermining the state’s ability to hang on to its coveted role in kicking off the presidential nominating process. “We want to protect our first-in-the-nation status,” said Branstad. “We wanted to show the RNC we’re team players.”
Branstad defended the state party rule and rejected the idea that a state where presidential candidates can spend millions of dollars and months of their time, where their Iowa supporters can work for a year or more to win the Iowa caucuses, should recognize that effort by strictly allocating convention delegates according to the caucus vote. “Whatever we do we want to do it in accordance with the RNC, that does not jeopardize our first in the nation Iowa caucuses.” He added, “Iowans do believe in following rules.”
But not everyone in the Iowa delegation fully agreed with Branstad.
Ben Berringer, an Iowa delegate who supported Cruz, acknowledged that the state party adopted its rule in response to what happened with the Ron Paul delegates in 2012, and he recalled that some called that outcome in Iowa a “national embarrassment.” But he noted that under the current Iowa rule, a candidate who didn’t even win any votes in Iowa who was the only candidate formally nominated at a national convention would then receive all of Iowa’s delegates.
“The question would be, is that a national embarrassment?” asked Berringer. “I think it’s a question that should be asked before we submit our rules for the next caucus cycle.”
Roll call vote
See also
- What happened last night at the nomination vote?
- What happened with Utah, Nevada, Alaska, and D.C. at the convention tonight?
- Donald Trump presidential campaign, 2016
- Mike Pence vice presidential campaign, 2016
- Republican National Convention, 2016
