Farce at the Republican convention

News.com.au reports:

Delegates opposed to Donald Trump’s nomination claimed to have gathered enough signatures from their colleagues to force a vote on the convention’s rules. Those rules include a measure “binding” delegates to their presidential candidates, meaning most of them are required to vote for Trump to be the nominee whether they want to or not.

If the rules had been rejected by the convention, delegates would have been free to vote “with their conscience” instead, throwing Trump’s nomination into serious doubt. …

To prompt a roll-call vote on the floor of the convention, the rebel faction needed signatures from a majority of the delegates in seven states. They appeared to have surpassed that threshold, with the delegations from Colorado, Washington, Virginia, D.C., Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Wyoming and Utah on board, when Congressman Steve Womack, who was serving as convention chair, appeared on stage.

Instead of announcing a roll-call vote, however, Womack simply asked the delegates to shout “yea” or “nea”, before quickly announcing the rules had passed and abandoning the stage. …

The secretary of the convention, who normally would have received the delegates’ petition, reportedly went into hiding in an effort to avoid it before the vote. Meanwhile, Trump’s aides moved around the floor trying to force delegates to remove their signatures.

The secretary was hiding behind a curtain with armed guards, so he couldn’t receive the petition. What a farce.