Posted on 04/11/2016 7:54:01 PM PDT by reaganaut1
Donald Trump is right: The system is rigged. Its rigged in favor of front-runners. Thats why Trump, who is leading the Republican nominating contest, has a larger percentage of delegates (46 percent) than of votes (37 percent). Unsurprisingly, Trump never mentions when the rules have helped him. He much prefers to whine and peddle conspiracy theories when they dont.
Trumps latest tantrum is over Colorado, where Ted Cruz just swept all 34 of the states available delegates. Trump is calling the results totally unfair and on Twitter he asked: How is it possible that the people of the great State of Colorado never got to vote in the Republican Primary? If Trump is so concerned about states not holding primaries, perhaps he should renounce his victory at Nevadas caucuses.
Colorado is one of ten states and four territories that opted for caucuses or state conventions over primaries. That does not make it undemocratic. In fact, on March 1, in community centers, gymnasiums, and churches across the state, 60,000 Colorado Republicans attended 2,917 precinct caucuses to elect delegates to the county assemblies and congressional-district conventions that convened during the following weeks. The district conventions send 21 delegates to Cleveland; and at this weekends state convention, more than 600 people chosen by the county assemblies competed to be one of Colorados 13 statewide delegates. Nothing was stolen. This is how Colorados delegate-selection process works.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
the colorado caucus process is a sick, insider, anti-democratic joke. About half a dozen people show up for each precinct caucus, and elect people to attend county assemblies and Congressional district assemblies; the county assemblies elect people to the state convention. The CD and State assemblies then elect delegates, who are supposedly unbound.
A couple thousand people out of a population of 5 million participate.
if all registered republicans actually showed up, there wouldnt be enough meeting rooms to hold them in the entire state and the caucuses wouldnt work. in fact, the GOPe is counting on just a very, very,very few showing up. thats why the reserved caucus rooms are always so very, very, very tiny.
family members who have children to take care of, meals to prepare, and work to prepare for dont have time to waste on a meaningless process where party insiders are going to steal the whole thing at the end anyway.
on the other hand, colorado is a mail-in ballot state for ALL elections, so a few hundred thousand would have voted in an actual primary, whereas the caucuses were held on a weeknight when people have to take care of their families and then go to work the next day.
btw, if this is such a wonderful process, shouldnt all of our elections for everything require everyone to show up at 7pm to 8pm on a Tuesday night in order to vote?
“Show me the lie.”
__________
The article is intentionally misleading, I believe. The article tries to conflate two unrelated concepts. First, it argues that in some states Trump got, say, 50% of the votes but 60% of the delegates and thus was unfair to Cruz. Of course, the same is true for Cruz, who won by 13% in Wisconsin, and got about 90% of the delegates. The fact that the popular vote percentage and delegate percentage does not match up is true for every state’s delegate allocation system (some are winner take all, some proportional, some hybrid) and NEITHER candidate is complaining about this, because this fact does not favor either candidate in any way.
Next, the article tries to take the above disparity in popular vote and delegate allocation (which applies equally to each candidate, fair and square) and argue, without any logical connection, “Thus, the Colorado system was fair.” Wrong. In every other state, the voters got to actually vote for a candidate. In Colorado, they changed their system with Trump leading Cruz in the polling. It appears they did this to make the system more favorable for Cruz, and in the process they deprived one million of their citizens of the right to vote, and instead turned the process over to party insiders. It does not pass the smell test.
The former head of the Colorado republican party, not a Trump supporter, agreed that the process appeared unfair, saying “We’re sending the message that your vote doesn’t matter and your voice doesn’t count.”
The fact that the Colorado GOP sent out a tweet saying “We did it. #NeverTrump” makes it clear what was going on.
>>>You are still not understanding how the number of votes per candidate changes with the number of candidates in the race at the time.
The time of the election of course; that’s how it works. I’m missing your point here.
If there were a National primary, then the proportional argument would have merit. But, we have individual state by state elections for delegates (exception Colorado where a vote doesn’t matter). Mid stream, it isn’t unusual to see the proportional issue (or lack there of).
Usually, the vote and the proportional delegates does end matching up when all states have been accounted for.
I have no problem with Colorado. Do you have a problem with the other states?
Why all the Trumpist angst about Colorado when there was none about North Dakota?
Don’t move the goal posts. That is a logical fallacy.
You think what happened in Colorado is a great ethical, moral, and rational way for a state to select a nominee??
Yes or no.
ND are unbound. Colorado’s are not.
Trump won the straw poll here in ND.
Then Tweeted out to their buddies mission complete then the lied about the tweet and deleted it.
No they did not.
That rule was changed in August 2015, and the caucus was not held until March 1. Any voter could vote in the caucus as long as they registered Republican 30 days prior to the election.
Nobody was deprived of their right to vote. But apparently, a whole lot of people couldn't be bothered to put forth the effort to exercise it.
He's essentially picking and choosing the rules he likes, and those he doesn't. But in the aggregate, his delegate count certainly represents fairly the amount of votes he has received under those rules.
It was the citizens of Colorado who lost and by extension freedom loving Americans. We all lost, because that state Republican party presumably with the blessings from the RNC deprived their citizens of the most basic right and source of power of Americanism...their right to vote.
This will not go away, will definitely not be “reasoned” away. Trump is fighting to restore America...he should be a “sore loser” when the people are harmed so wrongfully.
Everywhere else in the country, voter turnout has been at record numbers. How do you explain that this wonderful new system in Colorado resulted in a few thousand making the decision for over 1 million? Don’t blame it on Colorado voters—put the blame where it belongs, on a system designed to accomplish exactly the result it got: A few percent of the voters making the decision for all the others.
Whiny Don throws a Trumper tantrum.
***
Corrupt Ted overrides the will of the voters.
I’ll take someone who gets angry over tyranny over the would-be tyrant.
The rules were available to all candidates last year. The States choose how they run their primary/caucuses/conventions. Since Trump did not bother to set up a ground game, it is now someone else's fault.
Is it no longer FR protocol to ping a person being named in a post?
>Ill take someone who gets angry over tyranny over the would-be tyrant.
Well said.
You should know that there’s a big difference between obeying the rules, and using the letter of the law to subvert the spirit of the law.
Oh, and the other difference?
IN FLORIDA PEOPLE ACTUALLY VOTED.
IN COLORADO THE VOTERS WERE IGNORED.
CAN YOU SAY TYRANT TED?
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