Louisiana Voters Disenfranchised with Republican National Committee Ruling

“But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”

John Adams

Voters in Louisiana are being stripped of elected delegates to the Republican National Convention in Tampa, according to a ruling issued by the Republican National Committee-On-Contests on August 10th.

That ruling allows the delegates that were elected by the establishment L.A. GOP to be seated at the convention, rather than the duly elected delegates that represented the voters of Louisiana in four of six districts.

Rick Santorum was initially the winner of the primary, while Ron Paul finished fourth. However, the state has a bifurcated caucus and primary system, and Paul preformed extremely well in the caucuses that were held in April. Paul supporters dominated the 1st, 2nd, 5th, and 6th Congressional Districts.

Under Louisiana party rules, these results were to have guaranteed Paul 17 of 46 delegates to the National Convention. But the establishment had other plans.

The State convention was chaotic. Rules were broken, and rules were changed. Some of the rule changes were completely ridiculous, causing the delegation of Paul supporters to turn their backs on the farce and conduct their own by-the-rules convention.  Rule changes had been released to the delegates the previous day.

“When those rule changes were released to several of the delegates on Friday, they were not in keeping of ideas of liberty and democracy,” said Connie Barnard, vice chairman of the “rump” convention of Paul supporters.

“For example, one of the rule changes was that 1/3 of the delegation would constitute a quorum,” she said. “Nowhere does any public body or any seated body say that 1/3 constitutes a quorum.”

Louisiana Convention Credential Committee Chairman Jeff Giles said that the rule changes were submitted to keep Paul supporters from “stealing” Santorum and Romney delegates. The problem with this reasoning, of course, is that Paul supporters were in the majority, winning four of those six caucuses in April.

At the convention, 113 of the nearly 180 delegates voted to remove the former L.A. GOP chairman when he refused to respond to points of information or other motions from the floor. Nearly 2/3 of the delegation turned their backs on the chair. Chairman of the Rules Committee, Alex Helwig, made the motion to remove the chair and was arrested by Shreveport police. In the process, he had fingers broken.

State Central Committeeman Henry Hereford, who has a prosthetic hip, was attacked by security officials who “didn’t realize” that the previous chair had been ousted. He was injured and required hospitalization.

This is a rather long video, but it is unedited footage from the convention. You can clearly see the chair is ignoring the motions and requests from the floor, and the attack on Mr. Hereford:

Louisiana State Convention Chaos

After breaking away and concluding their own convention as per the rules of the L.A. GOP, newly elected delegates met with Louisiana Romney campaign chair, Scott Sewell, who told them that he “supported the effort and would do everything he could to make sure the delegation was seated’ in Tampa.”

According to the decision issued by the RNC Committee-on-Contests, the motions to remove Chairman Roger Villiere, the man appointed by the L.A. GOP, were out-of-order. The sticking point in the decision were the Supplemental Rules that were filed with the RNC prior to the convention; consisting of  the rules changes that were submitted to delegates the Friday prior.

The Committee ruled that those changes were appropriate under Rule 15 of the RNC rules, which lays out the rules on selection, allocation, and binding of delegates. You can view those rules, in their entirety, here:

Republican National Committee Adopted Rules 2008

As the rule changes were submitted before the convention, the executive committee of the L.A. GOP had the authority to make those changes, according to the ruling.  Therefore, since the rules changes were authorized, the RNC contends that the Paul delegation was not able to prove that the minority convention improperly elected their delegates. You can read their ruling here, courtesy of The Liberty Crier:

Committee-On-Contests Ruling LA Delegation

So, where does that leave Louisiana? The problem here is that Santorum, who is no longer in the race, was given ten pledged delegates, and Romney was given five. The caucus results were to have guaranteed Ron Paul 17 of the 46 delegates. Pursuant to the RNC’s acceptance of the delegates chosen at Villiere’s convention, Ron Paul now has ZERO delegates in Louisiana.

The voters in those four congressional districts, who chose Ron Paul, no longer have a voice at the National Convention in Tampa. In their quest to elect Romney, the L.A. GOP has silenced 74% of the voters in the caucus. Is this how we respect voter preference in America?

 

“In every declining civilization there is a small “remnant” of people who adhere to the right against the wrong; who recognize the difference between good and evil and who will take an active stand for the former and against the latter; who can still think and discern and who will courageously take a stand against the political, social, moral, and spiritual rot or decay of their day.”

Donald S. McAlvaney