Texas presidential primary becomes meaningless (of course, it really always has been)

Normally it works like this: Citizens vote in their respective party primary and if they are really gung-ho about this whole political thing (and they usually are during a presidential election year), they return to their polling place that evening for the precinct conventions that decide how the delegates will be allotted for each presidential candidate.

That’s not how it’s going to be done this year. Since the likely date of this year’s primary is May 29 and the state party conventions are scheduled for the second weekend in June, both the Democrats and the Republicans are talking about eliminating precinct conventions completely. The first round of conventions will be the Senate district get-togethers and they will be held before the primary.

Which makes the entire voting process for the presidential candidate of your choice completely meaningless because the delegates for each candidate will have been chosen before the primary. But then the voting in the Texas presidential primary has always been superfluous, since the conventions, not the voting, decide the final results. Say 57 percent of the voters in a Republican precinct vote for Mitt Romney, 23 percent vote for Rick Santorum, 17 percent vote for Ron Paul and the last 3 percent for Newt Gingrich. However, if Ron Paul supporters attend the precinct convention en masse and comprise 60 percent of the folks attending and Romney voters stay home to watch CSI, then Paul wins the precinct. Follow that?