Audio: Dr. Bob Holsworth Discusses “Bizarre,” “Ridiculous” VA GOP Nominating Process; Says Most Delegates Don’t Understand It

This morning WRVA’s John Reid Show, Dr. Bob Holsworth – Founding Director of the Center for Public Policy and the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University – had some information and interesting things to say about the VA GOP’s 2021 statewide candidates nominating process, which begins This Sunday, May 8. Check out the audio and highlights, below. Fun times! LOL

• “I’m thinking 75%, 80% of [the VA GOP delegates who registered] might show up…they’re registered…you had to take the effort to do so…maybe that won’t be the case, maybe it will be 50% or less…You can travel to a location in your congressional district.”
• “But that’s not going to resolve the awkwardness of the whole situation, where after they vote, they’re going to take those votes and…cart those off from wherever they are to Richmond and then start a count on Sunday. I mean, it’s a bizarre [process]…”
• “I think because they have three different races that they have to count, that could take long. I would think that the gubernatorial race could be counted in a day or two; I’d be surprised if that goes on to the 13th. But what a ridiculous situation! Most parties now hold a primary, that night you find out who won, and you don’t have this situation…”
• “When they go to vote…not every delegate, remember, has the same…amount of vote; the votes are allocated by locality. So in some localities, maybe every delegate gets one vote. In other localities, if they have more delegates registered, every delegate might get a quarter of a vote…I think it’s based on…population…and the other is the historical performance…for Republicans in elections…But I don’t think any of the delegates really know that right now.”
• [Host John Reid interjects: “I think that’s a recipe for unhappy people on Sunday night or Monday, when their person looks like maybe they’ve done well, but then they see the final tally and they go, wait a minute, how did this happen?”]
• “And then you have this Ranked Choice Voting, in which in all likelihood it’s who you put second or third that’s going to determine who wins…and then you’re going to have all of the situations about who voted for whom.”
• “And then at the end, you have, once again…yesterday Amanda Chase saying she couldn’t support Pete Snyder if he wins; what does that mean?“