Important Question Resolved

In a post late last night, I expressed concerns about the outcome of the GOP nomination for United States Senate. And the Republican State Convention yesterday, a number of delegate votes (approximately 22 or 23) were reported for Bob Berry, who had not qualified for nomination.

Under Robert's Rules of Order, which govern such questions in the State GOP under the Party Plan, those votes shouldn't have been counted at all, and certainly not reported, and the delegate votes split among Jim Gilmore and Bob Marshall in proportion to the other votes in the unit.

My questions arose because: (a) we didn't know which unit they came from; and (b) because Jim Gilmore's margin of victory was so narrow that I feared it might have changed the outcome when properly calculated. Such a happenstance could be used by unsavory people (this links to my discussion of him, not to his site, as I will not link to racist sites) to hobble our nominee, in the same way that unscrupulous people did so with regard to last year's 51st House of Delegates District race.

Fortunately, the Chairman of the unit in question, the Salem Republican Committee (don't know his name), saw my post, and offered this helpful clarification of the issue:

FWIW, the Berry issue was actually resolved correctly. The 6th District, and specifically Salem and Roanoke City, were where the Berry votes came from (I know because I counted the Salem ballots). While they were initially reported, they came back to us and told us to remove those Berry votes (our 5 votes cast for 44 delegates became 4 votes cast for 44 delegates). We then recalculated and the official numbers were based on these recalculated numbers (done according to Roberts Rules).

I was sufficiently concerned that I raised my concerns at the Convention with Eleventh District GOP Chairman Becky Stoeckel, and to Kathy Marshall (a long-time friend). I have no problem with Jim Gilmore as our nominee; I simply voted for Bob for reasons stated elsewhere, and didn't want him harmed by any hint of impropriety.

In any case, I am happy that the issue was resolved correctly. My concerns have been laid to rest.

Unqualified congratulations to the Republican nominee, and the next junior Senator from Virginia, Jim Gilmore!