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.
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.
Apparently in Nevada and Maine, there were Romney people with Paul pins handing out fake delegate slates instructing Paul supporters to vote for those delegates. It has the Ron Paul logo on it, and a smattering of better known Paul delegates, but with the rest being for Romney. This is backed up with video evidence and photographs. They also, apparently, smuggled in a bunch of guests to add to the voice votes.
As for Paulite tactics, I think the simple truth of the matter is that a majority of Paul supporters are more enthusiastic and better organized to go caucus for their candidate than are the Romney people.