The GOP Launches a Handy Site to Explain Its … Complicated Convention Situation

This election cycle is chock full of confusion. Why, for instance, were there a bunch of steaks on display during a Donald Trump press conference? How, exactly, did that whole Ted Cruz is the zodiac killer meme get started? Where did Jim Gilmore suddenly come from, and also, where the hell did Jim Gilmore go?
Perhaps the most mind-boggling part of the 2016 election is the possibility of a so-called contested convention in the Republican party, which would prevent Trump from clinching the nomination, even though he has, so far, amassed the most delegates of any candidate. But what is a contested convention and how does it work, you might ask?

The GOP has got you covered. Today, the party launched a new explainer website called Convention Facts in an effort to demystify the arcane process. It includes definitions of everything from what a delegate is and how delegates are chosen to who writes the rules of the convention to how a contested convention works.
Lesson 1: Don’t call it a contested convention. The GOP apparently prefers the term “open convention.” It’s less, well, contentious that way. As the site makes clear, an open convention occurs when no single candidate can secure 1,237 delegate votes by the convention. At that point, the delegates, who were initially bound to the candidate their district supported in the primaries, become unbound and can vote for whoever they want. Whoever gets to 1,237 delegates by the end of the week-long convention wins the nomination.
The website makes it all seem simple enough. And, technically, it is. But the very need for this type of site reflects what a total mess the Republican party has found itself in at a late stage in the nominating process. Typically, the nomination is sewn up well before the convention, making the actual event a prolonged celebration of the party’s newly anointed one. There hasn’t been a contested GOP convention since 1976. This year, all the byzantine rules (which, by the way, are subject to change every four years) might actually matter.
The simplicity of the website also belies all the backroom dealmaking and negotiating that the Cruz and John Kasich campaigns will have to do before the convention if they want to convince unbound Trump delegates to join their teams. For Trump’s campaign, of course, it’s just the opposite.
Still, the site is a handy way to wrap your head around a system that will only get more complicated in the coming months.