Election Transparency

OKLAHOMA CITY – “Not for sale! Not for sale!” and “Follow the rules! Follow the rules!” That is what was being chanted by Republican delegates and attendees of Oklahoma Republican State Convention, as it moved out into the parking lot of the Embassy Suites in Norman late Saturday afternoon.

As Mentesana explained: “The Oklahoma GOP was holding a delegates conference and they were not allowing everyone to vote. They shut down everything and left. They took it out to vote in the parking lot" ... and pizzas were provided by Ustream viewers.*

In a voice memo Mentesana sent to us, one attendee explained to her that the convention was adjourned illegally and proper protocol was allegedly not followed by the party leadership.

Jimmy Jingo 22:46:32
This is precisely what the Travis County (Austin) Texas GOP tried to do, change the rules so that only the nominations committee -- which they chose -- could pick delegates, and remove the ability for precincts to choose their delegates. But we defeated their attempt by amending their rule to allow precinct caucusing, and also ended up in a parking garage, finally ending the convention at 11pm. RON PAUL, 2012!!

Rosemary 22:22:38
I'm from Ohio and I watched the upstream and witnessed the GOP that was conducting the Convention refusing to let people speak or follow the rules. The whole episode was "We're going to do it this way or no way", closed the meeting down without approval from anyone. Definately violated just about every rule he could.

annebeck58 21:59:48
I was on Ustream, ALL day, with SuriyahFish, the young woman who set it up.. and WOW. When the Mainstays of GOP decided to ILLEGALLY, with NO VOTE, end the first part of this convention, it was IMMEDIATELY SUGGESTED that Anyone who wanted to CONTINUE adjourn to the parking lot. Seems only the LIBERTY party decided to do that, though ALL were invited. I would say, based on what certain OK GOP folk said, getting home for dinner was more important than election OUR next president, so they went home. The Ron Paul folk STAYED and carried on with business as is usual in a convention. Such a wonderful event.

When I arrived inside the convention I quickly located the Ron Paul table. There to “greet” me were two cops and a campus security guard parked next to the table. Was intimidating to me, and it spoke volumes to all the other delegates for other candidates (vindicating people’s fear of us). They were staring down everybody, and leaning in to hear every conversation between delegates and table volunteers.

Voting in our Congressional Districts

The ballots had the Romney delegates identified with asterisks to help the sheep vote for the right people.
Several district results were incorrect, contested, recounted, and corrected - resulting in Ron Paul wins.
Ballot security was non-existent. We put the ballots in to a Tupperware container, and in my district a guy just walked off with them to have them counted – alone! One other supporter and I followed him as he insisted we weren’t allowed to watch the counting.

General

All day, the GOP elite were explaining to the floor how the Romney sheep should vote. No time given to the Ron Paul campaign to give instructions to our delegates.

It was easy to see that for decades, this was all just an elite frat party – nothing more. Nothing contested, sheep blindly voting for the well-connected elite who were pre-selected to the national frat party. "Just fill in this bubble here. Thanks for serving your country!"

GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul's rabble-rousing troops controlling the Nevada Republican Party may be sidelined by national leaders who plan to funnel money through their own "Team Nevada" offices to back Mitt Romney's White House bid.

The Republican National Committee's strategy to work around the troubled state party and starve it of cash was revealed Wednesday, a day after Paul backers led a successful effort at a Clark County GOP meeting to rebuke RNC Chairman Reince Priebus. They passed a resolution calling on Priebus to resign for helping Romney's campaign before he has officially won the GOP nomination.

In a break from previous election years, however, the RNC will likely transfer money directly to the Team Nevada offices for campaign activities such as voter registration, voter ID and get-out-the-vote efforts instead of funneling the cash through state party coffers, a GOP operative said.

"We're just going to work around them," the operative said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Paul contingent is angry that the RNC is helping Romney while the Texas congressman remains in the race. He's collecting hundreds of delegates from Nevada and other states to the national convention so he can influence the party platform and remain a factor in the White House contest.

Ok. So what would have happened if the meeting or caucusing was done correctly?

Explanation and uses
Point of order (RONR) Class Incidental motion
In order when another has the floor? Yes
Requires second? No
Debatable? No (but chair can permit full explanation)
May be reconsidered? No
Amendable? No
Vote required: Is ruled by the chair

A point of order may be raised if the rules appear to have been broken. This may interrupt a speaker during debate, or anything else if the breach of the rules warrants it. The point is resolved before business continues.

The point of order calls upon the chair to make a ruling. The motion is sometimes erroneously used to ask a question of information or a question of parliamentary procedure. The chair may rule on the point of order or submit it to the judgment of the assembly. If the chair accepts the point of order, it is said to be sustained or ruled well-taken. If not, it is said to be overruled or ruled not well-taken.

A month after Mitt Romney’s loyalists were trounced by supporters of Ron Paul in the former governor’s home state caucuses, the Massachusetts Republican Party is trying to invalidate some ballots.

It has infuriated rank-and-file Republicans who accuse establishment insiders of bending the rules to their own benefit.

“Just because you didn’t like the outcome of an election doesn’t mean you overturn it because you have the power to,’’ said a state committeeman, Stephen Zykofsky.
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But last week, the party’s counsel began telling Republicans who were questioning the results that the provisional ballots would not be counted and that the rules had never allowed provisional ballots to be cast in the first place.

That had some Republicans fuming: Why did the party print, distribute, and collect provisional ballots only to later tell voters who cast them that they were invalid?

“Now it’s time for Republicans to come together, and if they’re trying to unify the party, not counting the ballots is certainly not the way to do that,’’ Mellem said.

Why does the GOP easily cave to some members of their party like the Tea Partiers but completely shit on the Paul crowd?

“In another instance, State Central Committeeman and Ron Paul supporter Henry Herford Jr. of Franklin Parrish was attacked by some security officials who didn’t realize that the body had voted out the previous chairman. Mr. Herford has a prosthetic hip and according to a doctor at the scene it appears as though the prosthetic was dislocated and may require replacement. The injury occurred as he was beginning to call to order the newly re-formed convention.

“In yet another instance, Ron Paul supporter Alex Helwig, Chairman of the Rules Committee who made the motion to remove the chair, was arrested by Shreveport police and released. During his brief detainment, some of his fingers were broken and when he returned to the event he was walking with aid of a cane.

The following narrative includes links to reports, first-hand testimonials, and video evidence highlighting actions taken by the GOP to ensure a Romney victory, at the expense of fracturing the party just prior to the general election. Party leaders at the county and state level have changed or violated party rules, cancelled caucuses, changed vote counts, thrown out entire counties of votes, counted public votes privately, called-in the SWAT team, and inexplicably replaced Paul delegates with Romney delegates to block Ron Paul from winning the nomination.