On the Road to the Republican National Convention! How the Republican Party Assign Their Delegates!

"AND THEY'RE OFF!" The first of the Caucuses and Primaries are now in the record books. Winners and Losers declared the field narrowed. As, you know all this hoopla is about each of our two National Political Parties determining who is going to run for the office of President.

But, what happens after the dust is cleared from the Primaries and Caucuses? How are the Candidates selected to represent their parties? One would think that the person with the most votes, the popular vote would be the candidate to represent their party on the National Playing Field. However, that is not the case in our political system. Each party, in order to ensure a true democratic process, assign delegates to vote for each candidate. It is these votes that will truly who will run for the office.

In the case of the Republican Party a Candidate needs to have a majority of the delegate votes in order to receive "The Party" nomination. That means the winner of the nomination will need to have 1,212 delegate votes out of 2,422. But who are these delegates and where do they come from, you may be asking?

Each party has their own special way of allocating delegates. For the Republican Party they have 10 delegates for each state, a delegate is awarded for each National Committeeman, Committeewoman, State Party Chairman of each State, America Samoa, the District of Columbia, Guam, Northern Marianna Islands, Puerto Rico the U.S Virgin Islands. They also allocate 3 district delegates for each member of the US House of Representatives, 16 from the District of Columbia, 20 from Puerto Rico and 6 from each of our territories.

If you haven't noticed this still doesn't add up to the 2,422 delegates needed to make the convention so the Republican Party award bonus delegates to each state in which the majority of the Electoral College voted Republican in the last Presidential Election. They also reward bonus delegates for each Republican member elected to State Offices and State House seats.

After, the magic number of delegates are reached they are up for grabs in the various caucuses and primaries around the country. Depending on the State or Caucus rules the candidates can either receive a portion of the delegates at large or a portion of them. For example, South Carolina is a winner take all state and Newt got all 25 delegates to vote for him at the National Convention. However, Iowa is a proportional Caucus and a each of the top 3 winners each receive 6 delegates to represent them at the convention.

When these delegates go the the National Convention they will vote, depending on Party and State rules, as either pledged or un-pledged for the candidates up for Nomination. Even though this process is very complex and lengthy it provides us as voters time to decide who we want to represent us on a National level. So when, Primary or Caucus comes to your State, vote, voice your opinion, exercise your rights and help to select the next person to run for President.