Even though the Republican National Convention is officially underway, with presumptive party nominee Donald Trump all set to be coronated, there's a sliver of hope for the remaining #NeverTrump voters in Cleveland: Republicans looking to stage an anti-Trump coup have acquired enough signatures to force a ballot on convention rules, Politico reports.
The last hope for #NeverTrump holdouts lies in a technicality — that is, delegates haven't officially voted for Trump as the GOP nominee yet. The reason it's "presumptive" is because enough people in enough states voted for Trump in the Republican primary contest, theoretically binding enough delegates to mark their ballots for Trump at the convention and grant him the nomination.
Except, of course, if anti-Trump warriors can change the GOP rules. Last Thursday, the rules committee of the Republican National Committee rejected a proposal to do just that; Colorado delegate Kendal Unruh, an outspoken #NeverTrump supporter, led the charge to enable "votes of conscience" that would free Trump-bound delegates from voting for the mogul if it went against their personal morals. And despite a ruling last week by a federal judge that freed Trump-bound delegates in Virginia to vote with their consciences, such delegates are still bound by party rules.
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But if this new initiative — forced to the floor after anti-Trump Republicans gathered a sufficient number of signatures to necessitate a vote on convention rules — succeeds, the stipulation that pledged delegates vote according to their state's election results could be abandoned in favor of a "conscience" vote, which many interpret as freeing Trump-bound delegates from actually voting for him. And while it's "highly unlikely" the #NeverTrump faction actually wins the rules vote, Politico notes, the rebel delegates "hope to… prove what they've long claimed: that a significant section of the party still doesn't support the presumptive nominee."
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