kathy88
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Full Update on First Day of Maine Convention From a Delegate in Attendance:
I was at today's ME convention and can confirm much of the prior updates on the events. The Ron Paul supporter contingent was out in force. The doors weren't to open until 7:30am and there were several hundred RP supporters in line by 5:30am. By the time the doors opened, the line was very very long, with the first half of the line being all Paul supporters. The convention was scheduled to begin at 9am with the pomp and circumstance and promptly to be followed by election of a Convention Secretary and Convention Chairman before 9:45am.
Because it was taking awhile to get the back half of the line through the door, the Maine Republican Party Chairman (Charlie Webster) postponed commencement to allow the stragglers to get their credentials. So, the festivities didn't begin until 9:30 or a few minutes after. Following the National Anthem, etc., the first vote of the day was for Convention Secretary. At the outset, the RP campaign coordinators were providing information to the RP supporters, including lists of endorsed candidates for the various positions to be voted upon.
Charlie Webster put forward the nominee for the position that was picked by the party (and supported by the Romney supporters at the convention). The RP-supported candidate was then put forward. A standing vote was called and was declared too close to be called. A county-by-county numbered vote then commenced (this was around 10am). The process for how the county level folks were going to count people was not well-established, so nobody knew how to count everyone in a room of almost 2500 people. As such, multiple re-counts were initiated by Charlie Webster. I like to think that these were legitimate re-counts as people didn't really know what they were doing. Finally, after over an hour, the vote was announced that the RP-supported secretary had won by a margin of about 30 votes.
At that point, I saw the Romeny coordinators go into overdrive. They were attempting to find any vacant delegate seats (where delegates hadn't shown up) and find alternates who were Romney supporters to fill those seats. Not against the rules in and of itself, presuming that they were only filling those seats with previously duly elected alternate delegates from the same municipality as the absent delegate... but I don't know that anyone at the registration desk was checking this. As I'll mention later, the records at the registration desk were not the best kept, and that point came up later in the convention. Note also that at this point late arriving delegates were still being checked-in and joining the fun now almost three hours late. I also noted a number of Massachusetts license plates in the parking lot...
We then proceeded to election of the Chairman. Again, Charlie Webster put forth his hand-picked nominee (whom he had tried to appoint to the position by executive fiat last week and without a vote). The RP-supported candidate was put forward. It was anticipated to be a close vote, so we went straight to a counted vote. This took quite some time again. After the vote was tallied and presented to Webster, there were "significant discrepancies" (Webster never explained what that meant) that required a re-count. At long last (now almost 1pm!) the vote was read aloud, county by county, and the result was the RP-supported nominee winning by only 4 votes (about 30 more votes were cast in this vote than were cast for Secretary).
The Romney folks erupted with motions to re-do the vote, suspend the rules, request information about how many delegates had actually been registered and in what counties (either to see if they could challenge the vote by saying that more votes were cast than should have been, or perhaps data mining to see where they could try to pack alternate delegates into vacancies). At this point, Webster was getting irritated with how far behind the convention was (halfway through the first day and not even having a Chairman!) and postponed further discussion on the matter while Senator Susan Collins gave a speech. We then adjourned for lunch.
During lunch, RP supporters began to be given cards by incognito Romney supporters. These cards were nearly exact copies of the RP campaign's lists of RP-supported candidates, but with different names on the list. There were actually several different versions... some were clever enough to include the names of some RP-endorsed folks and only replacing some with Romney guys - to split the vote on the others. Additional vacancy-filling activities also appeared to be going on. The mood of the Romney supporters was very sour and I overheard several vitriolic conversations.
After the adjournment (after 2pm now), the microphone had a line of Romney supporters ready to lob motions. They asked for a tally of the delegates in attendance. Webster consulted with the registration folks and informed the questioner that the information could not be provided... because the records were disorderly. This drew cat calls. The Romney folks made mention of suspending the whole convention while they figured out how many delegates were registered and whether people who weren't delegates were voting. Webster, to his credit, shot that idea down. Then a motion was brought to suspend the rules (which do not allow secret ballots on the Convention Chair) in order to allow a re-vote by secret ballot... That motion required a 2/3 majority to pass. It failed. With that, Webster turned-over the gavel to Brent Tweed (the RP-supported candidate) to serve as Chairman.
Brent was immediately faced with more redundant motions to kick him out or otherwise postpone or suspend the rest of the elections of the convention. Consulting with the parlimentarian, these motions were either deemed out of order or were summarily shot-down by vote of the delegates (all of these types of motions to suspend the rules or campaign require a 2/3 majority vote).
The meeting adjourned briefly so that the Chairman could consider how to revise the schedule to try and keep us on track (now 5 hours behind schedule). When the meeting recommenced, a motion was made for a revised schedule to try and catch-up (shifting around the timing of speeches and voting) to try to complete the day's voting agenda. Everyone I think agreed that this had to be done and the motion passed handily.
We then commenced (around 3pm) with the nomination of candidates to serve as national delegates to the Tampa convention. The slate of RP-supported candidates was moved. A line of at least 45 Romney folks then began nominating everyone they could possibly think of... they nominated tons of RP-supporters and also moved to add the slate of candidates on the fake RP list - trying to split the vote or get people elected that they knew would not ultimately attend the convention in Tampa. This required many RP supporters who did not want to run as delegates to have to also go up to the mic to have their names removed from consideration. It also took a long time... and was possibly a dilatory tactic to try and scrap the whole convention (if we can't seat delegates at our convention, we can't send them to Tampa - if Romney can't have them, nobody can!).
Finally, the slate was set and the printing of ballots was commenced while various Congressional candidates made speeches.
What happened next is still not entirely clear to me, but here is what appears to have happened based upon my perception and conversations with others after the fact:
With the ballots ready, we were soon to commence voting for national delegates. The county leadership personnel were going to be delivering ballots to their county delegates for voting when instructed by the Convention Chairman. They were to ensure a count was taken of the ballots delivered and to collect all ballots that were handed out. We had not yet commenced this process. Unfortunately, whether by accident or by intent, the contingent from Oxford County (of all of the counties there, it was the one most heavily for Romney) began handing out ballots prematurely without counting them and then it appears that many people left with ballots (perhaps to make copies like they did with the RP nominee lists?) - resulting in many ballots immediately disappearing. Ballot security was compromised... all of the ballots had to be scrapped...
Then, the decision had to be made of what to do... new ballots would take time. The Romney folks began making numerous motions to delay the vote until the following afternoon (very late in the game). The Chairman countered with the potential to have the vote Sunday morning, first thing (9:30am). The Romney camp folks adamantly opposed this, saying all of their people would be in church (insinuating that the RP folks don't go to church). Ultimately, a motion was made and passed to have everyone stay and vote later in the day Saturday.
So, we broke to county-level meetings around 5pm to vote on local party personnel, etc. And, we waited for ballots...
The last county (including me) finally got out of there at around 8pm.
The RP supporters were a little exuberant at times (cheering, a few shouts of "President Paul"), but were very respectful, patient and orderly. There was only one real nasty scene, when at around 7pm a Romney supporter began cursing and shouting about how the RP campaign had completely screwed everything up and that the Convention Chair was incompetent and completely screwed-up the convention... He also went out of his way to say "I'm not an actor." He was booed and then coaxed out of the room by some other delegates. I saw a few folks taking video... Perhaps they'll show-up on youtube.
Looking forward to an exciting day tomorrow!!!
A Report on Day 2 from Maine:
Day 2 began with a brief non-denominational church service, in which the minister preached a message of unity without compromising of beliefs.
Then, business began at 9:30am with the meeting of the First Congressional District meeting (southern part of the state). From the look of the crowd, Romney supporters (he has more support in the south than the north of the state) were still out in strong numbers. The point of this meeting was to elect the 3 national delegates and alternates, and one Presidential Elector. This meeting began with election of a district Secretary and district Chairman. In uncontested elections, the Convention Secretary (Paul supporter) was elected as Secretary for the 1st district and one of our state legislators (Katz) was elected Chairman.
Romney supporters then began raising voluminous points of order and objection, attacking everything about the Convention and district meeting as possible - among other things, they questioned the number of credentialed delegates present, whether a quorum was present, whether the schedule was out of order, whether certain procedures needed to be followed without which the whole Convention should be scrapped. This took several hours... the Chairman very politely thanked people for their motions and disposed of them appropriately according to Robert's Rules. He could have dismissed many of these more quickly as dilatory, but gave the objectors the courtesy of allowing them to voice their objections. As the points continued to be raised, any votes on such motions drew fewer and fewer Romney supporter support, as everyone just got sick of hearing the same motions over and over. The people making the objections grew more and more exasperated before beginning to lose wind and become more despondent.
At this meeting, it was announced that the State Committee member results were in - which went very heavily (if not unanimously) to Paul supporters. The unofficial list of national delegates results was also revealed (though could not be officially revealed until later), showing that Paul's supporters took 100% of the 15 at-large delegate seats. We voted on 1st district national and alternate delegates, as well as the 1st district Presidential Elector. The vote tally on those is still out, but I'm confident that all of those positions were won by Paul supporters. Throughout this process, the Romney folks (including lawyers that were brought in) continued to break order and try to get motions voted on to suspend the whole Convention and throw out all of the results.
We then broke from the 1st district meeting (actually, we broke during the meeting several times to do these following things) to: (1) hear speeches from Gov. Paul LePage and Senator Olympia Snowe and (2) go back to a full floor convention of all delegates.
Now, it is around 2:30pm. Going back to the full Convention, Brent Tweed resumed the Chairmanship and was immediately met with a flood of motions (there must have been 30 Romney folks in line waiting to make motions). These included the same motions to throw out of whole Convention for various reasons, motions that the Convention must end no later than 6pm to avoid incurring additional costs for the facilities (to which several responded that they would personally contribute $ to pay the extra costs), and also included motions stating that Tweed is "incompetent" (among other derogatory comments) and asking for a no-confidence vote. Mr. Tweed graciously obliged and the no-confidence vote was handily defeated. Shortly thereafter, upon suggestion of the Parliamentarian, Mr. Tweed read the rule in Robert's Rules regarding dilatory motions and began to tighten-up on the delay tactics. I feel that the objectors were trying to delay the process so long that business could not be concluded and so delegates would not be seated.
The national delegates list was confirmed, State Committeeman and Committeewoman were elected by strong majority votes and two at-large Presidential Electors were elected by strong majority votes. All positions were won by Paul supporters. The Romney votes in opposition continued to dwindle as they lost steam in the fight.
Then, the 2nd Congressional District Meeting was held (around 5pm). I watched from the balcony. They also elected a Chair and Secretary in uncontested elections. More objections were raised and the Chair dealt with them well. Many objections claimed that the Convention was going too long and was subject to too many delays... to which the Chair responded by asking people to stop making motions on that point because it was precisely those motions that were causing the delay. After that, the objections died-down. The 2nd district elected its national delegates and national alternates along with a Presidential Elector - all went to Paul supporters.
Now, we're re-convening the full delegation for a few extra votes (6:45pm) so I've gotta go. We still have to elect national alternates, and approve a party platform, but I expect no further drama at this point. If anything else happens, I'll post about it.
In sum, (while a couple of votes are still being counted) over two days Paul's supporters won: (1) all 21 of the national delegates up for election (votes still being counted for 3 of them), (2) both the National Committeeman and National Committee Woman, (3) all of the At-Large National Committee persons, (4) all of the Presidential Electors (one still subject to vote count), (5) almost all (don't have an exact number, but my county went 7 of 7 and the total looks like it went about 75% to Paul supporters) of the State Committee positions and (6) I expect all of the national alternates, which will be voted on shortly. It was basically a 100% clean-sweep.
Follow-up post will come if there are any shenanigans or other changes to the above-mentioned vote.
Update already - Romney guys attacking the existence of a quorum.
Closing Comments on Maine Day 2:
Well, sure enough there was some last minute excitement.
We reconvened the full delegation to vote on alternates and the party platform. Nominations were made for alternates. More repetitive objections were made as well, but these were now only getting a handful of votes as the vast majority of Romney folks still in attendance (many did stick it out to the end) just wanted to get the convention done and go home. Votes were taken on the nominations and, as expected, all of the national alternate seats went to Paul supporters. Then, the new party platform was brought before the convention. For those who don't know, the 2010 platform was a big win for Paul supporters at the 2010 convention... just about the only win in that convention. It was a very strong liberty-oriented and government-limited platform that set forth specific agenda items for action. The proposed 2012 platform wasn't too bad, but was more of a feel good document than a directive document. Some impassioned speakers stood up to rally the convention to reject the 2012 platform and retain the 2010 platform. By a large margin, the 2010 platform was retained.
The 1st District meeting, which had been suspended in order to allow the full convention to proceed while awaiting vote tallies for the 1st District vote on delegates, alternates and electors, then reconvened. Upon reconvening, we were informed that the ballots had not yet been completely counted. Apparently, they counted several times just to ensure they had the numbers right. While it turned-out later that the vote was a landslide victory for Paul supporters, they wanted to ensure they had the exact numbers in case of challenges. At this late hour (I was starting to lose track of time, but it must have been close to 9pm), lots of people were tired and started going home since all of the voting issues were done. After looking over the 1st District delegation that remained, the Chairman of the 1st District meeting announced his opinion that a quorum was no longer present. There was some confusion as to what to do at that point and a number of points of information were raised to try and determine what exactly that meant for the proceedings. Fortunately, the RNC had actually supplied the Convention with one of the foremost parliamentarians around, and he (together with two other parliamentarians who were brought in) advised that the lack of quorum at this point did not preclude us from closing the meeting and did not impact votes already cast earlier in the day. So, we suspended the meeting to reconvene when results were available for announcement. While waiting, about 50 Paul supporters helped clean the auditorium and stack all the chairs. An hour or so later the results were in, announced, and the meeting was closed. All positions went to Paul supporters. Then the full convention reconvened and closed. It was a tiring event.
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Full Update on First Day of Maine Convention From a Delegate in Attendance:
I was at today's ME convention and can confirm much of the prior updates on the events. The Ron Paul supporter contingent was out in force. The doors weren't to open until 7:30am and there were several hundred RP supporters in line by 5:30am. By the time the doors opened, the line was very very long, with the first half of the line being all Paul supporters. The convention was scheduled to begin at 9am with the pomp and circumstance and promptly to be followed by election of a Convention Secretary and Convention Chairman before 9:45am.
Because it was taking awhile to get the back half of the line through the door, the Maine Republican Party Chairman (Charlie Webster) postponed commencement to allow the stragglers to get their credentials. So, the festivities didn't begin until 9:30 or a few minutes after. Following the National Anthem, etc., the first vote of the day was for Convention Secretary. At the outset, the RP campaign coordinators were providing information to the RP supporters, including lists of endorsed candidates for the various positions to be voted upon.
Charlie Webster put forward the nominee for the position that was picked by the party (and supported by the Romney supporters at the convention). The RP-supported candidate was then put forward. A standing vote was called and was declared too close to be called. A county-by-county numbered vote then commenced (this was around 10am). The process for how the county level folks were going to count people was not well-established, so nobody knew how to count everyone in a room of almost 2500 people. As such, multiple re-counts were initiated by Charlie Webster. I like to think that these were legitimate re-counts as people didn't really know what they were doing. Finally, after over an hour, the vote was announced that the RP-supported secretary had won by a margin of about 30 votes.
At that point, I saw the Romeny coordinators go into overdrive. They were attempting to find any vacant delegate seats (where delegates hadn't shown up) and find alternates who were Romney supporters to fill those seats. Not against the rules in and of itself, presuming that they were only filling those seats with previously duly elected alternate delegates from the same municipality as the absent delegate... but I don't know that anyone at the registration desk was checking this. As I'll mention later, the records at the registration desk were not the best kept, and that point came up later in the convention. Note also that at this point late arriving delegates were still being checked-in and joining the fun now almost three hours late. I also noted a number of Massachusetts license plates in the parking lot...
We then proceeded to election of the Chairman. Again, Charlie Webster put forth his hand-picked nominee (whom he had tried to appoint to the position by executive fiat last week and without a vote). The RP-supported candidate was put forward. It was anticipated to be a close vote, so we went straight to a counted vote. This took quite some time again. After the vote was tallied and presented to Webster, there were "significant discrepancies" (Webster never explained what that meant) that required a re-count. At long last (now almost 1pm!) the vote was read aloud, county by county, and the result was the RP-supported nominee winning by only 4 votes (about 30 more votes were cast in this vote than were cast for Secretary).
The Romney folks erupted with motions to re-do the vote, suspend the rules, request information about how many delegates had actually been registered and in what counties (either to see if they could challenge the vote by saying that more votes were cast than should have been, or perhaps data mining to see where they could try to pack alternate delegates into vacancies). At this point, Webster was getting irritated with how far behind the convention was (halfway through the first day and not even having a Chairman!) and postponed further discussion on the matter while Senator Susan Collins gave a speech. We then adjourned for lunch.
During lunch, RP supporters began to be given cards by incognito Romney supporters. These cards were nearly exact copies of the RP campaign's lists of RP-supported candidates, but with different names on the list. There were actually several different versions... some were clever enough to include the names of some RP-endorsed folks and only replacing some with Romney guys - to split the vote on the others. Additional vacancy-filling activities also appeared to be going on. The mood of the Romney supporters was very sour and I overheard several vitriolic conversations.
After the adjournment (after 2pm now), the microphone had a line of Romney supporters ready to lob motions. They asked for a tally of the delegates in attendance. Webster consulted with the registration folks and informed the questioner that the information could not be provided... because the records were disorderly. This drew cat calls. The Romney folks made mention of suspending the whole convention while they figured out how many delegates were registered and whether people who weren't delegates were voting. Webster, to his credit, shot that idea down. Then a motion was brought to suspend the rules (which do not allow secret ballots on the Convention Chair) in order to allow a re-vote by secret ballot... That motion required a 2/3 majority to pass. It failed. With that, Webster turned-over the gavel to Brent Tweed (the RP-supported candidate) to serve as Chairman.
Brent was immediately faced with more redundant motions to kick him out or otherwise postpone or suspend the rest of the elections of the convention. Consulting with the parlimentarian, these motions were either deemed out of order or were summarily shot-down by vote of the delegates (all of these types of motions to suspend the rules or campaign require a 2/3 majority vote).
The meeting adjourned briefly so that the Chairman could consider how to revise the schedule to try and keep us on track (now 5 hours behind schedule). When the meeting recommenced, a motion was made for a revised schedule to try and catch-up (shifting around the timing of speeches and voting) to try to complete the day's voting agenda. Everyone I think agreed that this had to be done and the motion passed handily.
We then commenced (around 3pm) with the nomination of candidates to serve as national delegates to the Tampa convention. The slate of RP-supported candidates was moved. A line of at least 45 Romney folks then began nominating everyone they could possibly think of... they nominated tons of RP-supporters and also moved to add the slate of candidates on the fake RP list - trying to split the vote or get people elected that they knew would not ultimately attend the convention in Tampa. This required many RP supporters who did not want to run as delegates to have to also go up to the mic to have their names removed from consideration. It also took a long time... and was possibly a dilatory tactic to try and scrap the whole convention (if we can't seat delegates at our convention, we can't send them to Tampa - if Romney can't have them, nobody can!).
Finally, the slate was set and the printing of ballots was commenced while various Congressional candidates made speeches.
What happened next is still not entirely clear to me, but here is what appears to have happened based upon my perception and conversations with others after the fact:
With the ballots ready, we were soon to commence voting for national delegates. The county leadership personnel were going to be delivering ballots to their county delegates for voting when instructed by the Convention Chairman. They were to ensure a count was taken of the ballots delivered and to collect all ballots that were handed out. We had not yet commenced this process. Unfortunately, whether by accident or by intent, the contingent from Oxford County (of all of the counties there, it was the one most heavily for Romney) began handing out ballots prematurely without counting them and then it appears that many people left with ballots (perhaps to make copies like they did with the RP nominee lists?) - resulting in many ballots immediately disappearing. Ballot security was compromised... all of the ballots had to be scrapped...
Then, the decision had to be made of what to do... new ballots would take time. The Romney folks began making numerous motions to delay the vote until the following afternoon (very late in the game). The Chairman countered with the potential to have the vote Sunday morning, first thing (9:30am). The Romney camp folks adamantly opposed this, saying all of their people would be in church (insinuating that the RP folks don't go to church). Ultimately, a motion was made and passed to have everyone stay and vote later in the day Saturday.
So, we broke to county-level meetings around 5pm to vote on local party personnel, etc. And, we waited for ballots...
The last county (including me) finally got out of there at around 8pm.
The RP supporters were a little exuberant at times (cheering, a few shouts of "President Paul"), but were very respectful, patient and orderly. There was only one real nasty scene, when at around 7pm a Romney supporter began cursing and shouting about how the RP campaign had completely screwed everything up and that the Convention Chair was incompetent and completely screwed-up the convention... He also went out of his way to say "I'm not an actor." He was booed and then coaxed out of the room by some other delegates. I saw a few folks taking video... Perhaps they'll show-up on youtube.
Looking forward to an exciting day tomorrow!!!
A Report on Day 2 from Maine:
Day 2 began with a brief non-denominational church service, in which the minister preached a message of unity without compromising of beliefs.
Then, business began at 9:30am with the meeting of the First Congressional District meeting (southern part of the state). From the look of the crowd, Romney supporters (he has more support in the south than the north of the state) were still out in strong numbers. The point of this meeting was to elect the 3 national delegates and alternates, and one Presidential Elector. This meeting began with election of a district Secretary and district Chairman. In uncontested elections, the Convention Secretary (Paul supporter) was elected as Secretary for the 1st district and one of our state legislators (Katz) was elected Chairman.
Romney supporters then began raising voluminous points of order and objection, attacking everything about the Convention and district meeting as possible - among other things, they questioned the number of credentialed delegates present, whether a quorum was present, whether the schedule was out of order, whether certain procedures needed to be followed without which the whole Convention should be scrapped. This took several hours... the Chairman very politely thanked people for their motions and disposed of them appropriately according to Robert's Rules. He could have dismissed many of these more quickly as dilatory, but gave the objectors the courtesy of allowing them to voice their objections. As the points continued to be raised, any votes on such motions drew fewer and fewer Romney supporter support, as everyone just got sick of hearing the same motions over and over. The people making the objections grew more and more exasperated before beginning to lose wind and become more despondent.
At this meeting, it was announced that the State Committee member results were in - which went very heavily (if not unanimously) to Paul supporters. The unofficial list of national delegates results was also revealed (though could not be officially revealed until later), showing that Paul's supporters took 100% of the 15 at-large delegate seats. We voted on 1st district national and alternate delegates, as well as the 1st district Presidential Elector. The vote tally on those is still out, but I'm confident that all of those positions were won by Paul supporters. Throughout this process, the Romney folks (including lawyers that were brought in) continued to break order and try to get motions voted on to suspend the whole Convention and throw out all of the results.
We then broke from the 1st district meeting (actually, we broke during the meeting several times to do these following things) to: (1) hear speeches from Gov. Paul LePage and Senator Olympia Snowe and (2) go back to a full floor convention of all delegates.
Now, it is around 2:30pm. Going back to the full Convention, Brent Tweed resumed the Chairmanship and was immediately met with a flood of motions (there must have been 30 Romney folks in line waiting to make motions). These included the same motions to throw out of whole Convention for various reasons, motions that the Convention must end no later than 6pm to avoid incurring additional costs for the facilities (to which several responded that they would personally contribute $ to pay the extra costs), and also included motions stating that Tweed is "incompetent" (among other derogatory comments) and asking for a no-confidence vote. Mr. Tweed graciously obliged and the no-confidence vote was handily defeated. Shortly thereafter, upon suggestion of the Parliamentarian, Mr. Tweed read the rule in Robert's Rules regarding dilatory motions and began to tighten-up on the delay tactics. I feel that the objectors were trying to delay the process so long that business could not be concluded and so delegates would not be seated.
The national delegates list was confirmed, State Committeeman and Committeewoman were elected by strong majority votes and two at-large Presidential Electors were elected by strong majority votes. All positions were won by Paul supporters. The Romney votes in opposition continued to dwindle as they lost steam in the fight.
Then, the 2nd Congressional District Meeting was held (around 5pm). I watched from the balcony. They also elected a Chair and Secretary in uncontested elections. More objections were raised and the Chair dealt with them well. Many objections claimed that the Convention was going too long and was subject to too many delays... to which the Chair responded by asking people to stop making motions on that point because it was precisely those motions that were causing the delay. After that, the objections died-down. The 2nd district elected its national delegates and national alternates along with a Presidential Elector - all went to Paul supporters.
Now, we're re-convening the full delegation for a few extra votes (6:45pm) so I've gotta go. We still have to elect national alternates, and approve a party platform, but I expect no further drama at this point. If anything else happens, I'll post about it.
In sum, (while a couple of votes are still being counted) over two days Paul's supporters won: (1) all 21 of the national delegates up for election (votes still being counted for 3 of them), (2) both the National Committeeman and National Committee Woman, (3) all of the At-Large National Committee persons, (4) all of the Presidential Electors (one still subject to vote count), (5) almost all (don't have an exact number, but my county went 7 of 7 and the total looks like it went about 75% to Paul supporters) of the State Committee positions and (6) I expect all of the national alternates, which will be voted on shortly. It was basically a 100% clean-sweep.
Follow-up post will come if there are any shenanigans or other changes to the above-mentioned vote.
Update already - Romney guys attacking the existence of a quorum.
Closing Comments on Maine Day 2:
Well, sure enough there was some last minute excitement.
We reconvened the full delegation to vote on alternates and the party platform. Nominations were made for alternates. More repetitive objections were made as well, but these were now only getting a handful of votes as the vast majority of Romney folks still in attendance (many did stick it out to the end) just wanted to get the convention done and go home. Votes were taken on the nominations and, as expected, all of the national alternate seats went to Paul supporters. Then, the new party platform was brought before the convention. For those who don't know, the 2010 platform was a big win for Paul supporters at the 2010 convention... just about the only win in that convention. It was a very strong liberty-oriented and government-limited platform that set forth specific agenda items for action. The proposed 2012 platform wasn't too bad, but was more of a feel good document than a directive document. Some impassioned speakers stood up to rally the convention to reject the 2012 platform and retain the 2010 platform. By a large margin, the 2010 platform was retained.
The 1st District meeting, which had been suspended in order to allow the full convention to proceed while awaiting vote tallies for the 1st District vote on delegates, alternates and electors, then reconvened. Upon reconvening, we were informed that the ballots had not yet been completely counted. Apparently, they counted several times just to ensure they had the numbers right. While it turned-out later that the vote was a landslide victory for Paul supporters, they wanted to ensure they had the exact numbers in case of challenges. At this late hour (I was starting to lose track of time, but it must have been close to 9pm), lots of people were tired and started going home since all of the voting issues were done. After looking over the 1st District delegation that remained, the Chairman of the 1st District meeting announced his opinion that a quorum was no longer present. There was some confusion as to what to do at that point and a number of points of information were raised to try and determine what exactly that meant for the proceedings. Fortunately, the RNC had actually supplied the Convention with one of the foremost parliamentarians around, and he (together with two other parliamentarians who were brought in) advised that the lack of quorum at this point did not preclude us from closing the meeting and did not impact votes already cast earlier in the day. So, we suspended the meeting to reconvene when results were available for announcement. While waiting, about 50 Paul supporters helped clean the auditorium and stack all the chairs. An hour or so later the results were in, announced, and the meeting was closed. All positions went to Paul supporters. Then the full convention reconvened and closed. It was a tiring event.
