Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum's campaign on Wednesday claimed a 15-15 delegate tie with rival Mitt Romney the day after Michigan's primary — a claim Romney's camp immediately disputed. "We tied the state of Michigan," John Yob, adviser for the Santorum campaign, said in a press phone call Wednesday. "We view that as a major success." Romney, a Michigan native, won the statewide vote over Santorum 41 percent to 38 percent Tuesday in a hard-fought primary here. There are 30 delegates at stake in Michigan, 28 of which are awarded by congressional district and the remaining two based on the statewide vote. - Detroit News
The focus is the state wide delegates. Romney camp is saying 2-0, everyone else is saying 1-1.
Green Papers: 2 National Convention Delegates are to be proportionally bound to presidential contenders based on the statewide vote.
A candidate must receive 15% of the statewide vote to be eligible to receive National Convention delegates. From those candidates meeting this threshold, proportionally bind the national convention delegates according to the statewide vote. Round factions to the nearest whole number (below 0.5 are rounded down, 0.5 and above are rounded up). If the end result is less than 12 delegates, allocate 1 additional delegate to the candidate receiving the most votes statewide. If the end result is more than 2 delegates, subtract 1 delegate from the candidate receiving the fewest votes statewide.
So take > 15% votes, which is just Mitt and Santorum. Giving about 53-47, 54-46 split. If you then proportionally bind, Mitt gets 1.1 or so, and Santorum gets .9, which when rounded, clearly both go to one delegate each.
With this formula, for a candidate to get both delegates, their number would have to be > 1.5, or 75% of the vote for the 2 candidates. Clearly didn't happen.
Update: I guess the rules have changed: Statement by Saul Anuzis
Republican National Committeeman from Michigan
Member of the Michigan Republican Credentials Committee At the February 4th State Committee meeting held in Lansing, the Credentials Committee unanimously passed the procedures for allocating Michigan’s delegates to the National Convention in the event that the RNC imposes the 50% penalty on our delegation. We agreed that if only 30 delegates would be designated as voting delegates, the Michigan Republicans would send 2 from each congressional committee and 2 at large. We agreed that the two at large delegates would be taken from the top of the slated delegations as submitted by the candidate who received the most votes statewide. Last night the Credentials Committee met via teleconference and voted to apply the rules as passed unanimously on February 4th which results in the 2 at large delegates be awarded to the statewide winner, Mitt Romney. There were no changes in rules or procedures, the Credential Committee only ratified the existing rules as previously passed after some made erroneous claims to the media that the at-large delegates would be split. There is no disagreement amongst the members that this was the intent of the Credential Committee and there is email traffic between the committee members and counsel discussing the same. Regrettably, there was an error in the memo drafted and sent to the respective campaigns. There were questions raised at the time the memo was drafted as to whether the legal language used was accomplishing the goal of the committee and we were advised that it was, but now it is clear that the memo did not properly communicate the intent of the committee. The email traffic surrounding the drafting of the memo in early February makes explicitly clear what the intent of the committee was. The committee convened again last night to affirm that the intent was clear and that the memo was inaccurate. That affirmation came in a 4-2 vote. While we all regret the error in the memo, it does not change what was voted on by the committee, which was to award the two at-large delegates to the statewide winner. It was premature for any candidate to be declaring the delegate count prior to an official announcement by the Michigan Republican Party This is much to do about nothing. The rules were set in place, in advance, by a unanimous vote. A press conference should not force Michigan Republicans to change the rules. The
The Santorum camp responds: "There’s just no way this is happening. We’ve all heard rumors that Mitt Romney was furious that he spent a fortune in his home state, had all the political establishment connections and could only tie Rick Santorum. But we never thought the Romney campaign would try to rig the outcome of an election by changing the rules after the vote. This kind of back room dealing political thuggery just cannot and should not happen in America."
We've updated the sidebar and the spreadsheet for the new 16-14 allocation. |
.jpg)