CLEVELAND, OH – JULY 18: Delegates protest onm the floor on the first day of the Republican National Convention on July 18, 2016 at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. An estimated 50,000 people are expected in Cleveland, including hundreds of protesters and members of the media. The four-day Republican National Convention kicks off on July 18. (Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)
The #NeverTrump group was positive it was going to have the signatures needed to force a roll call vote to unbind delegates, even if their chances of winning the vote were very slim. But something happened, and three of the states that were on the original petition withdrew before the vote. Which states were they? What happened?
Here’s what you need to know.
The “Never Trump” faction was certain it had enough signatures on a petition to force a roll call vote. They would need signatures from the majority of delegates from seven states to force a roll call vote, and they had a petition with signatures from nine states: Colorado, Washington, Utah, Minnesota, Wyoming, Maine, Iowa, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. (Other reports claimed they had 11 states on the petition.) They wanted to force a vote to change the rules so that delegates could vote in the first ballot based on their conscience, not on how their state voted. This, they hoped, would allow them to remove Donald Trump as the nominee.
But they were surprised when Rep. Steve Womack, the current chair, announced that three states had withdrawn from the petition at some point, leaving them below the threshold required to force a vote.
On the C-SPAN feed, a man could be heard yelling, “We want to know who the states are!”
It’s not known which states withdrew or why their delegates changed their minds. C-SPAN and Town Hall had reported earlier that Iowa and Colorado delegations had walked off the floor after the rules weren’t adopted and a vote hadn’t been allowed earlier:
The Colorado delegation now
But exactly which states withdrew isn’t yet known. There was confusion earlier when Never Trump supporters tried to get the petition to Enid Mickelsen, with some speculating that she was “hiding” so she wouldn’t have to force a roll call vote. But it appears she was talking to people who were withdrawing their signatures.
We will update this story when we have more information about the states that withdrew.
