[EL] Florida to award delegates proportionally?

[Paul Lehto]

My semi-facetious "doomsday clock" for a brokered Republican convention
just moved another minute closer to midnight in anticipating of Florida
awarding its delegates proportionally rather than winner take all.
Everyone can decide for themselves whether the clock's hands are showing a
time during the morning, or showing 11:59 p.m., or somewhere in between.
The convention could be a lot of "fun", given the blessing of the US
Supreme Court in NY Bd. of Elections v Lopez-Torres to the idea that
convention procedures for elected delegates "need not be fair", given
(among other considerations cited) the venerable history the Court cited of
political parties making nominating decisions in "smoke-filled rooms."

Rather than embracing an anti-corruption principle, the US Supreme Court
has gone all the way to the opposite extreme in Lopez-Torres, embracing
past unfairness or corruption in smoke-filled rooms as venerable
tradition.  While the Court did mention in dicta that legislatures might
act to mitigate unfairness, they would have to do so while respecting the
First Amendment rights of association of the political parties themselves,
raising grave questions about whether state legislatures could act in an
effective manner to vindicate a fairness or anti-corruption principle that
operates at party nominating conventions.

Paul Lehto, J.D.


On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 10:22 AM, Goldfeder, Jerry H. <
jgoldfeder at stroock.com> wrote:

> There is an issue, raised on this site over the weekend, that, while the
> RNC has "punished" Florida for its primary date by halving its delegation
> and limiting its credentials and other convention-related perks, the state
> might also be forced to award its delegates proportionally. The rationale
> for not having done so thus far was that Florida has already seen its
> delegation cut by 50% ("the state has been punished enough!"); the
> rationale for compelling proportionality is that such procedure was
> contemplated by the RNC Rules that Florida has broken, and to simply reduce
> its delegation without compelling the required proportionality would be to
> turn a blind-eye to the central offense.  The long and short of it is that
> a challenge to any winner-take-all result might ensue.
>
> Jerry H. Goldfeder
> Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP
> 180 Maiden Lane
> New York, NY 10038
> 212-806-5857   (office)
> 917-680-3132   (cell)
> 212-806-7857   (fax)
> jgoldfeder at stroock.com
> www.stroock.com/goldfeder
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:
> law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Michael
> McDonald
> Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2012 10:15 AM
> To: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> Subject: [EL] Florida to award delegates proportionally?
>
> Michael Steele on MSNBC just stated that he has learned that Florida will
> award its delegates proportionally. Certainly an important development,
> particularly for Gingrich, if true.
>
> ============
> Dr. Michael P. McDonald
> Associate Professor, George Mason University
> Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution
>
>                             Mailing address:
> (o) 703-993-4191             George Mason University
> (f) 703-993-1399             Dept. of Public and International Affairs
> mmcdon at gmu.edu               4400 University Drive - 3F4
> http://elections.gmu.edu     Fairfax, VA 22030-4444
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Law-election mailing list
> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election
>
> IRS Circular 230
> Disclosure: To ensure compliance with requirements imposed by the IRS in
> Circular 230, we inform you that any tax advice contained in this
> communication (including any attachment that does not explicitly state
> otherwise) is not intended or written to be used, and cannot be used, for
> the purpose of (i) avoiding penalties under the Internal Revenue Code or
> (ii) promoting, marketing or recommending to another party any transaction
> or matter addressed herein.
> _______________________________________________
> Law-election mailing list
> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election
>



-- 
Paul R Lehto, J.D.
P.O. Box 1
Ishpeming, MI  49849
lehto.paul at gmail.com
906-204-4026 (cell)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20120131/4c38f25b/attachment.html>