The Occasional Observer

The Wyoming Cawkeye are today. Well, sort of. There are "County Delegates" who seem to be mostly juiced in locals. And then other "County Delegates" who were elected/selected last month. And these "County Delegates" select "National Delegates" who represent a given candidate at the Covention this summer.

That's if I have it right, which I probably don't. Here's the Weekly Standard trying to make sense of it for us:

...12 of the state's counties will independently elect one national delegate each at their county conventions. These county conventions range in size from about fifty county delegates in Teton county (pop. 19,288) to a hundred county delegates in Laramie county (pop. 515,004). In most counties, about two-thirds to three-fourths of the county delegates are committeemen and women who were elected back in 2006, while the remaining county delegates were elected at presidential caucuses held in December 2007 or appointed by the county chairmen in case of vacancies.

So the majority of county delegates who will choose Wyoming's 12 national delegates were not elected because of their presidential preference, but were vested with this power on account of being active party members. It's not exactly a model of Athenian democracy, but in Wyoming's defense, the county conventions are more democratic than the smoke-filled room where Warren G. Harding was nominated in 1920.