Does every delegate know who to vote for?

[spacehabitats]

I know this may seem like pretty basic stuff, but believe me, people mess this up ALL THE TIME. Make sure you understand how and why we are going to vote this way.

Hopefully every Iowa delegate on these forums has contacted or been contacted by an RP district coordinator by now.

Anyone interested in becoming a delegate to the Republican National Convention (RNC) should have notified their coordinator and should know if they have been selected by the group to be an RNC delegate candidate.
If not, try to communicate ASAP.

(In Iowa you have a choice of notifying the Chairman of the GOP district convention of your intention to run for RNC delegate OR you can wait until the convention to have someone nominate and second you.)

With 3 delegates and 3 alternates being selected from each district, each district should have a "slate" of 6 confirmed Ron Paul supporters who are ready willing and able to go to St Paul.

Why is this important to know ahead of time?
We need to coordinate our votes.

Unless your district has a clear majority of RP delegates (in which case I guess you could just vote them through as a slate all at once) you will want the voting to be done by a single ballot with each delegate voting for 6 names. The top 3 vote-getters would be the RNC delegates, the next 3 alternates.


If a stray RP delegate shows up who wants to go national but wasn't in on the development of the slate, let him vote for himself and 5 of the slate delegates. (Do NOT try to convince him to vote for ALL six and NOT to vote for himself.)

With planning (and voting as a block) 30% of the delegates could theoretically take all 6 slots! Without planning (and splitting your votes) even a 70% majority could get zilch.

See why it is important to communicate?
Good luck!

 

[rodo1776]

Good stuff spacehabitats!! Good to hear Iowa is organized. You have it down pat.
As a side note you may consider running SHILLS. If you look closely at the Minnesota results last weekend you see where there were 93 people running for three spots in one CD district. So the GOP split up all their votes while the RPers obviously stuck with the slate and won with a minority. I don't know if the RPers ran shills or there were just that many people that ran.
The idea is to have some of your people not on your official slate and not identified as RPers get up and run as well. These people can be solid McCain supporters or whatever SELLS in the convention. Suck votes from the stronger candidates. Get as many people running as possible to split the opponents votes. You can also have everyone sit next to some others and start talking and then say "Hey you are so good I think you would be a great National Delegate why not let me go ahead and nominate you?"
I assume that nominations from the floor are allowable in order to do this.
Anyway good luck to all of you!!

 

[spacehabitats]

Wow, great idea!

Good stuff spacehabitats!! Good to hear Iowa is organized. You have it down pat.
As a side note you may consider running SHILLS. If you look closely at the Minnesota results last weekend you see where there were 93 people running for three spots in one CD district. So the GOP split up all their votes while the RPers obviously stuck with the slate and won with a minority. I don't know if the RPers ran shills or there were just that many people that ran.
The idea is to have some of your people not on your official slate and not identified as RPers get up and run as well. These people can be solid McCain supporters or whatever SELLS in the convention. Suck votes from the stronger candidates. Get as many people running as possible to split the opponents votes. You can also have everyone sit next to some others and start talking and then say "Hey you are so good I think you would be a great National Delegate why not let me go ahead and nominate you?"
I assume that nominations from the floor are allowable in order to do this.
Anyway good luck to all of you!!

Of course! I'm sorry I didn't think of that.
If I had more lead time I probably could have encouraged more people to run. I'm not the coordinator though, so it would need to go through him to avoid confusion.

If you used RP delegates it would be obvious what we did, when a whole bunch of "candidates" didn't get any votes (ie did not vote for themselves) but I don't think they could actually do anything about it.

Great idea! Thanks!

 

[rodo1776]

Hey spacehabitats, Yeah it may be obvious but It will certainly be obvious when they count the ballots and you are organized and all your RP people have the same three names on the ballots right?
They will be counting whatever number of ballots the RP slate has and they will keep seeing the same three names. So your cover is blown at that point if they are not idiots. At least they will know there was a slate.
But who cares right? You hopefully have won and taken all three spots.
The SHILLS will hopefully get a vote here and there (sucking votes from your opposition) especially if they are well spoken etc. and so the votes they get or don't get will be much less obvious then your slate.


And I don't know on the other post about what I call STEALTH (not being openly RP) if you are opposed to that or not.
I can assure you though that if your slate people do not openly support RP they will be able to suck a few more votes from the non RP attendees which could make the difference in winning or losing.
Sure some people can not ethically get up there and lie but remember there is no law against it. And I assure you that the neo cons use this tactic all the time.
Remember if there were a law against lying (except in a court room) then almost every politician would be in jail.

So do what you have to do but you can see this stealth tactic works in other states and frankly is the only way we can get National Delegates in many states.

Anyway good luck and bring home the bacon!!!