Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely. -John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton It is being reported that an inquiry may be underway to discover how a Republican Delegate who missed today’s Republican Convention is recorded as having cast a vote for Charlie Baker. As reported in an earlier post, In order to become an “Endorsed” Republican primary candidate in Massachusetts, party rules require statewide candidates to capture 15 percent of the delegate votes in a convention. The process by which the votes were to be tallied was that the State Committeeman and State Committeewoman were to poll each delegates and record a votes for Baker, for Fisher or an abstention for any delegate who chose not to vote. Before the official vote Tally was concluded, a delegate asked a State Committeeman who had been involved with previous conventions, how the 15% was determined and was told that in past conventions, the 15% included only those delegates who voted. After the voting, the tallying of votes took an inordinate amount of time to complete, which suggests that there must have been issues with the counting. The Chairman finally declared that Baker was the sole “Endorsed” Gubernatorial candidate. The official delegate percentages were not announced by the Chairman to the Convention, but television newscasters after the event were reporting that Mark Fisher had 14.999% with abstains counted in the denominator. News reports also stated that the analysis of the percentages continued long after Baker was declared the sole “Endorsed” Candidate. This again suggests that there were issues that were still in the process of resolution. Again it was reported that , the MassGOP ruled against Mark Fisher in a ruling in which they stated that the 15% included delegates that abstained, as well as delegates that voted. If “Abstains” were not counted in the Denominator”, it was also reported that Mark Fisher had over the required 15% minimum. Additionally research on the subject as to whether “Abstains Count in the Denominator” found that, “According to Roberts Rules, abstains are not votes” and “… that there is no difference between a counted abstain and someone who didnt vote at all.” Stay tuned!
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 01:30:46 +0000