Ahh, I missed your point then.
Generally speaking there are two approches used to select delegates to the national convention. The primary or the caucus/convention. Many states use the primary system. The party at the national level has decided that if you have a poll of the members, it must be used in a binding manner and as such reinforces the primary method. It sounds straight forward but who gets on to the ballot? This is where we in Colorado have seen the national party come in and try to select our candidates for us. We got sick of it and went back to the caucus/convention system.
In the caucus/convention system, a delegate who votes for the interests of the party at the state convention. This is the system that Colorado started with (1912 - 1988) and is the system that Colorado returned to in 2004 and has used ever since. We also altered the state party rules so that ANYONE can run to represent the precinct. And we put a whole lot of delegates to the state convention (3,900+). The idea being that it would be much harder for the national bosses to influence a large group of grass roots locally elected delegates. If you haven’t notice, Colorado has a very strong streak of “Leave me alone, and stop telling me what to do.”
The system is solid. Does it work 100% of the time? No. Sometimes the process aligns with the GOPe, sometimes it doesn’t. Most often it results in a split of the delegates that does not align with the poll. But I would submit that it is at least as fair as a closed primary, winner take all system like Florida.
>The system is solid. Does it work 100% of the time? No. Sometimes the process aligns with the GOPe, sometimes it doesn’t. Most often it results in a split of the delegates that does not align with the poll. But I would submit that it is at least as fair as a closed primary, winner take all system like Florida.
To make it fair all they had to do was introduce a binding polling for presidential candidate. Which of course they scraped because then the party bosses couldn’t choose!