In a 65-page decision released Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Payne struck down a Virginia law that requires all Republican and Democratic delegates to support the respective winners of the state primary under threat of criminal prosecution. The thunderclap ruling is right on the legal and constitutional merits, but the larger political question is whether Republicans should adopt a conscience rule to unbind the delegates in Cleveland next week.
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It’s questionable what effect the rule will have at the Republican National Convention, or on Trump’s presumptive nomination.
“This case puts (the) unbound theory to rest, and is a fatal blow to the Anti-Trump agitators”, said Trump campaign attorney and former FEC Chairman Don McGahn in a statement. Trump won 36 states in the primaries and garnered a record of over 13 million votes.
Judge Payne ruled in favor of the first two counts of the five count amended complaint from Correll.
White says he’ll be voting for anyone but Donald Trump, who he says is a “divisive and controversial figure”, and predicted 10-12 Arizona delegates in total are planning to vote their conscience and oppose Trump, while 20-30 more are “very sympathetic to the cause and on the fence”.
It was a victory for Carroll “Beau” Correll, a delegate to the Republican national convention who argued that the law violated his First Amendment rights to vote for his preferred candidate.
Outside the federal courthouse Thursday, Correll said Republicans can do better than Trump. He said Trump’s campaign spurred him to join the
Never Trump movement.
But while Correll and other Virginia delegates will be freed from punishments under state law, the ruling does not have an impact on Republican Party rules. Typically a delegate is bound to their original vote, but as The Hill reported on July 11, a federal judge has given at least one delegate the chance to backtrack, opening the door to others in the near future. “Now that we have the funding and now that we are talking to the delegates, the next step is who’s the who”, Free The Delegates DC Lobbyist Jack Burkman told The Daily Caller Monday.
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“They put all their chips on the table and they lost all of them – if I were them I’d go hide in a closet in Trump Tower”, he said. I think something could emerge that could surprise the media.
