Over 120 delegates to the Republican National Convention have joined a lawsuit against the GOP arguing they have been illegally coerced into choosing Mitt Romney for the party’s presidential nominee and demanding they be “unbound” to vote for another candidate instead.
The federal lawsuit, filed this week in U.S. District Court in California by mostly supporters of Ron Paul, demands the delegates be freed to “vote their conscience” for presidential nominee at the party’s August national convention in Tampa, Fla., rather than being “bound” to vote for a certain candidate, as many state party bylaws require, based on the primary elections and other delegate selection procedures.
Courthouse News Service reports at least another 40 additional national convention delegates have asked to join the lawsuit.
Supporters of the effort say there is “evidence that the voting rights of Ron Paul Republican delegates and voters … have been violated by nearly every state GOP party and the RNC during the 2012 primary election phase.”
The delegates claim the party violated federal law by forcing them to sign loyalty affidavits, under threat of perjury, to vote for Mitt Romney, though he is not yet the official nominee.
“They don’t want to be bound to any candidate, or even be forced to vote for the nominee,” Richard Gilbert, of Gilbert & Marlowe, attorney for the delegates, told Courthouse News. “To have a real convention, the delegates must have free will so that when they meet, they can persuade each other and then decide who to vote for.”
More @ WND
No comments:
Post a Comment