On June 24, Carroll Correll, a Virginia delegate to the Republican national convention, filed a lawsuit to overturn a Virginia law that requires delegates to presidential conventions to vote for the candidate who received the most votes in the Virginia presidential primary. Correll v Herring, e.d., 3:16cv-467. The law says, “Delegates shall be bound to vote on the first ballot at the national convention for the candidate receiving the most votes in the primary unless that candidate releases those delegates and alternates from such vote.”
Correll says he does not wish to vote for Donald Trump, who received the most votes in the Virginia Republican primary. Correll says he is afraid Trump will sue him if he doesn’t vote for Trump.
Generally, laws such as this law are ignored. Delegates in reality obey national party rules, not state laws that attempt to tell them how to behave at the national convention. The Correll Complaint acknowledges this indirectly, when it points out that party rules don’t permit winner-take-all results anyway, for states that have presidential primaries as early as March 1, which Virginia does. So already the law isn’t being obeyed. The U.S. Supreme Court, ever since 1972, has issued several rulings that state laws cannot control the actions of national presidential conventions.
Many of the arguments that Correll makes would logically apply equally to certain state laws that try to tell presidential electors whom they must vote for.
