If that's true I would really like your feedback on this question. My premise is that about 99% of delegates are going to Cleveland with a preference. I can't believe there are that many that are undecided.
As an example we picked National Delegates in Iowa and I want to tell you what happened with one potential delegate. We passed this really strange rule. Every candidate to be a National delegate had to say, only between Trump and Cruz, who they would vote for on a potential SECOND ballot. Iowa HAS to vote the way Iowa voted even if candidates drop out on first ballot. So there were both Cruz and Trump supporters, getting along fine, and saying who they would vote for, and this weirdo gets up and says something like Cruz on first ballot, Trump on second ballot and Kasich on third as he is only guy who can win.
We had to vote for 3 and the bottom 11 would be eliminated so we could use electronic voting method. We turn in paper ballots and everyone around me, Trump and Cruz people, were mad at that guy. How dare he tell us Kasich. Only Cruz and Trump are eligible.
He had lowest vote count, either 2 or 3 votes, with 480 people there.
It was at that point I realize in this race we have all pretty much locked in to our candidate and if there is a second ballot, probably not too much bargaining will go on. Thoughts?
That’s interesting. What I was worrying about (as a Trump supporter) was not so much bargaining after the fact, but finding out at the convention that delegates from states Trump won were ready to switch to Cruz as soon as they were free to do so (depending on their state rules for first, second, third ballot, etc.).
The reason I was worried was because of stories about Cruz having a better delegate “ground game”, which I assume means being better at identifying delegate candidates in each precinct that will be loyal to Cruz when they are free to do so.
Here in PA, 54 of 71 delegates are completely unbound. When we vote April 26, apparently we won’t know which delegates support which candidates, unless our candidate’s team reaches out to instruct a, which has not happened yet. The Trump team should also be recruiting delegate candidates that favor Trump, and I don’t know whether or not it is happening. There may be people at the polling places with Trump signs offering to tell yo which 3 delegates we should choose. (And conceivably, they could be GOPe plants trying to lead me astray :-)
I am not one of the people that considers this cheating or stealing, but I do wish the party systems were more straight forward, so that if I vote for my candidate, I could be sure my vote counts toward my candidate, rather than subject to being intercepted by a more clever campaign operative.