The Republican National Committee is making plans for the possibility that the Republican national convention won’t choose any presidential nominee on the first ballot. See this story. The story does not say what those arrangements might be. However, common sense says the party might wish to determine whether the convention may add extra days. It is set for July 18-21.
The Republican Party leaders are despicable people. Donald Trump has a bigger lead than any Republican presidential candidate has had at this point in a non-incumbent contest in recent memory. They will do anything to keep Trump from being the nominee. There is simply too much graft on the line for the real owners of our country to allow Trump to be pres.
Hope that the EVIL hack oligarchs have an internal collapse — to get REAL Democracy.
NO primaries, caucuses and conventions.
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P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
The new World Republican Party uses pure proportional representation (PR).
The RNC might be better off leaving themselves the option to start the presidential balloting earlier in the convention so as to allow more time for additional ballots if needed. Even if the RNC could work out a deal with Quicken Loans Arena for an option to rent the arena for an additional day or days if needed, that would be an additional expense that they should prefer to avoid. Besides, the delegates would probably prefer to have a fixed schedule for the convention so they can book their hotel rooms and flights for definite days.
Brokered conventions are the subject of literature — Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II’s 1964 novel “Convention,” Gore Vidal’s 1960 play “The Best Man,” Allen Drury’s 1968 novel “Preserve and Protect,” the last two episodes of the 2004-2005 season of the TV show “The West Wing” — not modern reality. They make great dramatic (sometime comic) stories, but they haven’t existed in the modern era — I’m 65, so I’d put that in 1960, when primaries started to become prominent.
If either party returned to the Democrats’ pre-1936 two-thirds rule, we’d see a brokered convention. Not till then, sorry. It would be fun.
The only other alternative to getting brokered conventions besides the 2/3 rule would be to dramatically undemocratize (lower-case D) the nominating rules. In 1960, for example, the uncle of a close friend, Grant Sawyer, was governor of Nevada and a Kennedy supporter. Although the state’s two U.S. Senators supported Johnson and a good number of Nevada Democrats hoped Stevenson would run a third time, Sawyer got all or nearly all the delegates to vote for Kennedy.
If you want to read about the 1960 Democratic convention balloting, see The New York Times coverage: https://partners.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/600714convention-dem-ra.html I remember watching the roll call on TV in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
In addition to the other problems with an Republican convention running long, the Democratic convention starts the Monday after the Republican convention is supposed to end. If the Republicans can’t wrap up their convention in time for the media to pack up and go to Philadelphia for the Democratic convention, I think that would go over poorly with reporters.