The Republican officials trying to keep the drama-filled GOP convention on track just can’t catch a break.
After powering through the delegate vote count that made Donald Trump the official GOP nominee with relatively little disruption from the Never Trump crowd, the proceedings of Tuesday evening’s convention programming were briefly interrupted because the Alaska delegation request a recount of its votes.
“We were never told that you were going to miscount our votes tonight,” a representative from the delegation said from the stage’s microphone, according to The Atlantic.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), the chair of the convention, asked the delegate if he was requesting a recount, which the delegate confirmed he was.
“A delegation has taken exception to the correctness of the vote for the delegation for Alaska. Accordingly, the convention staff will report to the delegation to supervise the poll,” Ryan said.
For about 20 minutes, the convention’s house band entertained the audience with the Soul hits of the 1970s. Explaining what exactly happened then fell to Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus.
He explained that the number of votes counted for Alaska were different than the number the delegation reported due to a rule that affects four states. According to rule 16A2, Priebus said, if all the other candidate drop out, the bound delegate vote is reallocated to the remaining candidate.
“So you understand? So under the rule, he is correct that that is how Alaska originally voted,” Priebus said. “However, since there was only one candidate left running, the bound vote gets shifted under the safe party rule and that’s why the secretary read it that way.”
He noted that tonight, the delegations were allowed to note which votes of their states initially went to the other candidates that were running — a practice different than how the convention operated in 2012, Priebus said.
