Poll dancing in Colorado

Once upon a time, in a sleepy little upper Midwestern state named Iowa, a caucus was held. It was a wonderful day. The people of Iowa have long loved their peculiar way of engaging of presidential politics. On this particular occasion they held their non-binding straw-poll to indicate their preferences for the various candidates. Rick, and Mitt, and Ron, each did pretty well and took the top three slots respectively. Mitt got some momentum by being declared the winner of the poll on election night, but the final count showed Rick up by over 30 votes. After the dust settled between the two top-dogs in Iowa, Rick had his victory, Mitt finished strongly as a very close runner up, and Ron had his respectable 3rd place finish  - with 22 out of 28 delegates.

Those Iowans sure were silly way back in 2012. But the voters, and the media all took such things in stride in those days. The RNC, however, was another story all together. They were not amused. They set out to replace this caucus chaos with some establishment order, and replace it they did. Never again would a straw-poll say "Rick" and the delegate election say "Ron". With the firm conviction that insurgents never win straw-polls the rule was handed down: "If you hold a straw-poll, your delegates can't support some anti-establishment hack (Ka-ron paul-choo!)." And in their nice upper-Midwestern way, the Iowans said "OK".

Coloradans, on the other hand, told the RNC to stuff it. Coloradans don't want the establishment telling them how to run things in Colorado. They want their delegates to do crazy things like vote for candidates that are still in the race on the first ballot at the national convention. For instance, if a hypothetical candidate named Marcio Rubo fell out of the race early, but refused to release his delegates prior to the national convention, Coloradans don't want their delegates to be forced to vote for Marcio over someone that could actually win on the first ballot at the convention. Coloradans want the ability to adapt to a situation that may change between March and July. 

The best kept secret of the past two months is that Colorado voted on March 1st. Watching the news one could be forgiven for leaping to the conclusion that a few GOP execs got together and hand picked all of Colorado's delegates this past week. That would be news to the over 60,000 Coloradans that caucused and picked delegates back in March. But mainstream media mogul, and presidential candidate (meaning a candidate for president, not a candidate who is presidential) Donald Trump has been deprived of delegates for the minor offense of putting no effort whatsoever into trying to win delegates in Colorado.