On Friday tenth district national delegate Beau Correll filed a class action lawsuit in federal court challenging the Virginia law that compels delegates at the Republican convention to support the primary candidate winner on the first ballot.
Correll is challenging the law on behalf of 49 Republican delegates and 110 Democrats. The law reads:
“Delegates and alternates 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’s complaint says,
“The First Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees delegates to the Republican Party’s and Democratic Party’s national conventions the right to vote their conscience, free from government compulsion, when participating in the selection of their party’s presidential nominee. Nonetheless, Virginia law acts to strip them of that right, imposing criminal penalties on delegates who vote for anyone other than the primary winner on the first ballot at a national convention. That law cannot be sustained under the First Amendment or as a legitimate exercise of Virginia’s authority under the United States Constitution.”
The full complaint is here.
Correll’s lawyers have also filed an injunction saying Correll will need protection from prosecution because he intends to vote against Trump at the convention.
“Correll, like many other Republicans, refuses to cast his first-ballot vote—or any other vote—for Virginia primary winner Donald Trump because Correll believes that Trump is unfit to serve as President of the United States. Yet, if he does not vote for Trump, he faces criminal penalties, including fines and imprisonment,” they write in the injunction.”
A ruling in Correll’s lawsuit could free Virginia delegates to vote their choice for President at the convention. Delegates in other states are filing similar lawsuits.
More on the story here and here.
39 comments
[…] This lawsuit filed by Mr. Correll is baseless and represents the epitome of arrogance. It’s a self-aggrandizing, egomaniacal publicity stunt with no foundation and no chance of success. […]
[…] General Mark Herring has asked a federal court to reject National Delegate Beau Correll’s lawsuit asking for permission to break the rules of the Republican Party and st…to vote for someone other than Donald Trump at the convention later this […]
[…] Correll recently filed a lawsuit asking a federal court to allow him to not support Donald Trump for President at the Republican […]
Excellent! I pray he and the others who file similar lawsuits win and they should because they ARE already UNBOUND.
[…] Wall Street Journal entitled “Liberating the Delegates” the editors side with Beau Correll in support of his lawsuit […]
[…] for that mater) are bound to vote for a specific candidate, and what law, if any, binds them. A recent post here at TBE even discusses a lawsuit filed by one of our 10th District Delegates to the Republican Convention […]
Screw you Beau ! TRUMP 2016
this is B.S. IM’M FED UP WITH THESE SO CALLED POLATICIANS THEY ARE TRYING WHATEVER THEY CAN TO KEEP MONEY IN THEIR POCKETS, AND HIDE THERE ACTIONS BECAUSE TRUMP IS PUTTING IT OUT THERE. THE STATE OF VIRGINIA SHOULD SUE TO SEE WHAT ACTIONS , FINANCIAL BUY OUTS. ITS OUR RIGHT TO KNOW. GET SOME BALLS VIRGINIA FIGHT BACK AND SEE WHAT HES HIDING
Since this dumbass is unaware or incapable of reasoning due to the fact the RNC is a private club with rules he AGREED to by joining, he will lose and just wastes money that could be used to beat Hillary. He could even be a Hillary plant!
Have been wondering where the MONEY for this lawsuit is coming from ??
I’d better not get an email from Cuccinelli supporting this frivolous lawsuit. He should be honored to have been selected or bow out, no one is forcing him to go to the convention under threat of state prosecution.
These games by PeeWee Correll are the “politics as usual” that drives American voters nuts.There’s a reason they’ve flocked to Trump and Sanders. They are exhausted by hollow promises. There’s a sense of betrayal here in the U.S. and overseas. This is why Thomas Jefferson argued to James Madison that people should periodically shake things up: “It prevents the degeneracy of government, and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs. I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.”.
A storm churns in the political realm now. People are done with the doubletalk..And that’s why voters don’t mind upsetting the applecart now.
They have “little to win. But nothing to lose.”
Stop telling me how to think..
Stop telling me what to do..
Stop regulating me.
Let me take control of my own life..
He should be disqualified and replaced by the party. No prosecution by any government entity needed.
Trump should have been disqualified a long time ago. He IS comepletely unqualified and a danger to this country with his lack of knowledge and his demonstrated wrecklessness. We look at a person’s history to see how they will act in the future… neither Trump nor Hillary is an option, we must do better for America.
Mister Correll has assured himself of never again being a a Republican delegate. You get the choice to apply to be a delegate, not the choice to undermine the process that was put in place for all to see.
He should be removed and and replaced by an alternate.
What Eric, Greg, and Danielle said. Maybe this guy isn’t a self-serving horse’s ass, but first impressions are lasting ones, and he’d have to go a long way to prove otherwise.
Finally, we can drop the pretense that citizens have a choice in party primaries. In fact, we can drop primaries altogether because only the party insiders have the right to select the candidates. Now maybe we can get back to conventions only, so Corporate United money can be removed from this current corrupt process.
It takes a village is code for socialism. And the last thing a socialist wants is to keep.freedom alive.
But if we don’t start sticking together locally, there will be no end to power brokers lording over the rest of us. It all starts at the local level.
Trump doesn’t believe in local control. Heck, he doesn’t even believe in private property except for the elite like himself.
Your bankers, lawyers, developers, and politicians don’t believe in private property either. But those are the ‘civic minded’ people who end up running the local party apparatus. Do you trust them more than you do Trump?
Code for What? In other words, because HRC wrote a book by the title, we feel we have pretense to ignore the merits of what @mezurak wrote.
That is stupid. This is the kid squealing in health class at the first mention of the word “penis.” How about sitting down and reading what he wrote for its merits instead of blindly reacting to the GOP’s trigger warnings?
@mezurak — spot on! If we don’t hold ourselves accountable, we deserve every bad political turn we get.
A primary is just an idea whose leading.Not official
Stupid.
This action is idiotic. We’re starting to file lawsuits like the special snowflakes on the other side of the aisle. Suits like this diminish those incredibly serious legal actions our party takes on issues such as felon voting, ballot access, etc. Sooner rather than later, the narrative will become “Oh just another sour grapes lawsuit filed by Republicans.”
I use to think that shenanigans like this were born out of convictions of what is right. Now I realize it is nothing more than being sore losers and the fear of loss of hierarchical power. Delegates knew the rules going in, they agreed to the rules going in, and these actions smack of an arrogance of “not me but thee” when the rules are applied.
You.are.bound. Do your job. Quit trying to change the narrative to suit your meme.
Trump was not my first choice nor was he my second. I was a Cruz delegate. BUT, it didn’t happen. Millions of votes outvoted me. It is time to pick up the pieces and move forward.
This election cycle is a perfect opportunity to engage and educate. An ideal opportunity to share ideas and convince voters that we, as a party, are robust and united. There is way too much riding on this election to do otherwise.
You may want to burn down our house to prove you are right but how many members are going to be there to extinguish the flames when it happens?
You mean like Trump and his 3500 lawsuits?
When Trump sues somebody, it’s because using the legal system is good. But when somebody sues fir anything that doesn’t help Trump, it is evil.
Haven’t you heard? Four legs good, two legs bad…
….
This is grandstanding, disruptive and an attempt to thwart the will of the people as expressed at the ballot box. I assume Mr. Correll thinks electors in the national election need to have free reign to express their consciences, even if it is different than the expressed will of the people in the election. Wouldn’t that be fun.The more I hear Trump, the more convinced I am that he’s exactly the right person to help us slow down the Ruling Class of both parties. If Mr. Correll is not content to follow the rules, it is he who is unfit to be a delegate. If his conscience bothers him, then he should resign as a delegate and allow himself to be replaced by someone willing to follow the rules.
This is stupid. The delegates all knew the rules when they applied to be delegates. They knew the rules during the election. Many of them were elected to be delegates based upon commitments they had shared and their districts. The time to challenge this is not right before an election. It’s my opinion that the delegates need to go serve the normal and expected outcome when they were selected to be delegates at all.
The rules for the convention actually already allow for voting according to conscience. People are simply unfamiliar with them.
Why do we need delegates if they are just a rubber stamp? Did we go to the effort to select them just so they could go party?
The delegates to the Constitutional convention and the Continental Congress voted according to their own deliberations and conscience. This is the essence of a convention of delegates. Checks and balances go both way – a check on elected reps but also a check on the momentary passions of the people. A lot has happened since the primary. Trump has switched most of his positions to liberal ones – from gun control to illegal immigration. Now he wants to take weapons from American citizens without due process and also says Obama was heartless and deported too many – Trump will have a ‘heart’ instead. He ain’t gonna do one thing on immigration, folks.
Roughly half of Republicans already want the RNC convention to choose another nominee. That percentage would be higher if they knew the delegates have the right to do just that.
Any word on how this move has been received by other delegates?
Not yet.
Six of them have used their copy of the lawsuit as toilet paper.
On what basis? These are new issues to me, and I’m not totally clear on the state’s basis for governing the parties.
SCOTUS ruled that the state should have no control over the delegates of private groups such as the RPV and RNC.
So if this suit is consistent with a supreme court ruling, why are people objecting?
SCOTUS also ruled in Smith vs Allwright that the state can’t delegate duties to parties
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_v._Allwright