Andrew Crighton
Life Editor
Recently there has been a lot of talk about brokered and contested conventions in the media.
But what are they, and why do some prominent Republicans want one so badly?
To understand a brokered/contested, or open, convention you need to first understand what is required of a normal convention.
The national conventions for each party require a candidate to receive a certain number of delegates to be selected to run in the general election: 1,237 and 2,383 for Republicans and Democrats respectively.
Those delegates are assigned via the state primaries that have been going on for the past several months.
Each candidate can receive a certain number of delegates based on the percentage of the vote they won, with each state having a preordained amount of delegates.
An open convention is when no candidate has received the required number of delegates at the national convention.
The terms brokered and contested refer to the same situation but from, arguably, different time periods.
In decades past, the leaders of the party would be very influential in the decision of who was nominated, based on backroom deals, and could nominate a completely different candidate.
These were known as brokered conventions.
The more modern term is contested, which is based upon a different system for creating a majority. Instead of delegates being tied to who they were nominated to vote for during the primaries, they are released from that and can vote for whichever candidate they would like.
This is the basis for the controversial super-delegates used extensively by the Democratic Party. The theory is to allow a certain number of delegates to vote as they feel at the time of the convention, so that a majority is reached on the first vote.
So why do some within the Republican Party want a contested convention so badly?
Donald Trump.
Trump has a lot of support. That is undeniable. However, that support is decreasingly coming from the Republican Party and more from the far-right.
Ted Cruz is strongly against Trump, but that can be expected because he is in second place, and arguably the only one who poses a threat to Trump.
Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican candidate, has been very outspoken about wanting a contest convention.
There is a growing trend that Trump does not represent the ideals of the Republican Party as they believe another candidate could; however, Trump is on a path to securing the nomination.
As Romney puts it, the best tactic is not to try and have another candidate win the primaries, but gain enough votes to push the GOP into a contested convention.
John Kasich, who is also running for the GOP nomination, has said that he also would like a contested convention.
“What’s the big deal about that, other than it’s exciting,” said Kasich according to ABC’s “This Week.”
Some argue that Kasich only remains in the race in order to try and help create an open convention.
As of March 27, Kasich had 143 delegates as opposed to Trump’s 739 and Cruz’s 465, as reported by the AP.
For the Democrats, a contested convention is possible but not likely. Hillary Clinton had a total of 1,712 and Bernie Sanders had a total of 1,004 delegates as of March 27, according to the AP.
