[link to www.stltoday.com]

Donald Trump’s supporters call it “theft.” Ted Cruz’s supporters call it politics.

Backers of Trump, the national front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination and winner of Missouri’s March 15 primary, allege that backers of rival Cruz plan to “steal” Trump’s Missouri delegates by packing the state’s delegation-selection process with as many Cruz supporters as possible. That process starts Saturday.

“Ted Cruz is trying to overturn the vote of St. Louis residents,” Gary Wiegert, St. Louis city coordinator for Trump’s campaign, warned in an email to supporters Thursday. He urges those supporters to show up at caucuses this weekend to “help prevent Donald Trump delegates from being stolen by Cruz supporters.”

But Cruz supporters, along with Missouri GOP officials, counter that what Cruz’s people are doing isn’t theft. Rather, they say, it’s just a logical strategy going into a presidential nomination that could be unlike any in generations.

“There’s a very concerted effort because the battle is not over,” said Carl Bearden, a Cruz supporter in St. Charles County who acknowledges the Cruz campaign is trying to get its people elected as local-level delegates from caucuses in Trump-won areas of the state. “It isn’t over until someone gets to 1,237.”

That number, 1,237, is the number of delegates that Trump will have to win nationally to become the Republican presidential nominee when the GOP convenes its national convention in Cleveland in July. But with Trump’s loss in Wisconsin this week, most analysts say his chances of hitting that number before the convention are now slim.

If no one shows up at the convention with 1,237 delegates, it means the nominee won’t be chosen on the first ballot among the delegates. That means there will be a second and possibly subsequent ballots.

And that’s when it starts to matter who Missouri has sent to Cleveland as delegates.

Here’s how it works:

Missouri sends 52 delegates to the convention. Based on the March 15 primary results, Trump will get the votes of 37 of those delegates on the first ballot, and Cruz will get the votes of 15 of them.

The delegates themselves — the people who will physically go to Cleveland and actually decide on a GOP presidential nominee — haven’t been chosen yet. That will happen in meetings all over Missouri, in a multistep process that starts with local caucuses Saturday.

No matter who the chosen delegates personally support as the presidential nominee, they have to vote for the candidate to whom they are “bound” on the first ballot — meaning, 37 votes for Trump and 15 for Cruz.

Normally, that’s the end of it — which is why, for purposes of choosing a presidential nominee, the actual identity of the delegates doesn’t usually matter.


But if the convention fails to pick a nominee on the first ballot, then the convention will move to subsequent ballots. At that point, the delegates are no longer bound. They can then vote for any candidate they want.

In other words, someone sent to Cleveland as a Trump delegate could, on the second or subsequent ballots, decide to vote instead for Cruz.

That’s why Cruz’s campaign, here and around the country, is trying to get its supporters installed as delegates. And it’s why Trump’s supporters are trying to stop them.