Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney caused a stir last week when he announced Thursday that he and his advisers are exploring ways to block Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention in June, as reported by CNN.
Romney’s plan to thwart a Trump nomination is to prevent Trump from getting the majority of the delegates needed for him to automatically secure the party’s nomination.
If something like this were to ever happen, the Republican Party would host what’s called a brokered convention.
At this point, the delegates are no longer bound by the results of their state.
The 2,472 delegates will cast individual ballots for the nominee until a candidate has secured the necessary 1,237 votes.
I don’t contest the method of this system.
After all, the last time that this happened for the Democrats was in 1952 and for the Republicans in 1948.
It’s not as though this is a frequent event that party leaders use as a crutch in order to undo the results of a fair and just democracy.
That is, until Mitt Romney came along.
I don’t like Trump any more than the next person.
In fact, I’m a dedicated Bernie supporter.
However, what I support more than Sen. Bernie Sanders is the integrity of our nation’s democracy that makes it possible.
I feel that our nation’s democracy has been compromised by lobbyists, a lack of campaign finance reform and the overwhelming presence of big money in the political process.
Despite this, I don’t believe we need to continue its deterioration by standing by as Romney tries to fix the nomination process.
If enough members of the Republican Party want Trump to be their president, then the outcome of their votes should be unchallenged by party leaders who think they know better than the voters.
It’s dishonest and anti-democratic for the leaders of a political party to make any attempt to sway the outcome of an election in favor of their personal preference.
It’s similar to the use of superdelegates who are free to vote for whomever they choose regardless of election outcomes, by the Democratic National Committee in their nomination process.
In an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN, Debbie Schultz, Chair of the DNC, said, “Unpledged delegates exist, really, to make sure that party leaders and elected officials don’t have to be in a position where they are running against grassroots activists.”
Basically, the DNC Chair admitted that superdelegates in elections are used to make sure candidates like Sanders don’t win.
Some Bernie supporters believe elaborate conspiracies more easily than others do. Some have suggested that the DNC is intentionally rigging the election in favor of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
It’s clear that the use of superdelegates is designed to do just that.
But I’m not convinced the other theories put forth are entirely accurate.
I hope, though, that Bernie supporters are just as outraged by Romney’s plan to sabotage the Republican nomination as they are about the DNC sabotaging the possibility of a Sanders nomination.
Both tactics are deplorable. They erode the bedrock of our democracy. They make the international mission of the United States to establish free and fair elections in every country a joke.
Thus, the members of one political party should not dare to support the election rigging of the other.
And both sides should just cut it out.
thshowal@indiana.edu
@TherinShowalter
