[Last update 2015sep20]

Primary/Caucus/Convention Glossary


DELEGATE COUNTING DEFINITIONS

"The Green Papers" has two methods of counting the National Convention delegates for both major parties as they are allocated throughout the pre-Convention period (beginning with the January caucuses and ending with the last State Conventions in some of the caucus/convention states in June): a so-called "hard count" (which appears on our site as a "Hard Total" column to the right side of all graphs [those for the Conventions as a whole as well as for the major parties in each state]) along with a so-called "soft count" (which appears in the other three columns on our graphs- columns labeled "Soft Pledged", "Soft Unpledged" and "Soft Total"). The differences between these two counts of delegates is now to be explained:

HARD TOTAL - formal allocation
The "hard count" consists of a count of the National Convention delegates as they are formally allocated to presidential contenders (or to the ranks of the "Uncommitted") under the rules governing the selection of such delegates in each state or other jurisdiction (D.C., Puerto Rico or other U.S. territories). No delegates are placed in the "hard count" column unless and until they have been so allocated. The "soft count", meanwhile, is an estimation- based on the best possible information available to "The Green Papers" at the time- as to which presidential contenders delegates (even those who are nominally "Unpledged") will support on the floor of the Convention.
 
The "hard count" is cumulative: that is, as each bloc of delegates from a given state or other jurisdiction is formally allocated to presidential contenders or "Uncommitted", that allocation is- in effect- "frozen" in time; the number of delegates allocated to each presidential contender or "Uncommitted" will, therefore, continue to add up as the pre-Convention process goes along. Even if a presidential contender already formally/officially allocated delegates should subsequently drop out of the nomination race and release his delegates (in which case, his delegates could conceivably support another contender or become "Uncommitted") or a formally "Uncommitted" delegate indicate his/her preference for a given presidential contender prior to the National Conventions, any delegates already allocated to a given contender (or formally "Uncommitted") will continue to be counted as allocated to that contender (or "Uncommitted") in the "hard count" of "The Green Papers"- for a change in the support for a presidential contender by (or the "uncommitted" status of) a delegate, once that delegate is formally allocated by the delegate selection procedures of a state party, does not become official until that delegate first casts a vote during the Roll Call of the States for the party's Presidential Nomination on the floor of that party's National Convention.
 
The Green Papers "hard count", when posted, is (in order of preference) either (a) a state's or party's official breakdown of its delegation, (b) our initial soft count, or (c) the best sources' breakdown of the delegation (even where it differs from our soft count). We will choose (c) when our initial soft count is based upon incomplete information.
 
SOFT PLEDGED, SOFT UNPLEDGED, SOFT TOTAL - estimated allocation
The "soft count", on the other hand, will reflect the support for each presidential contender by either Pledged or Unpledged delegates- whether formally allocated yet or not- as best can be estimated by "The Green Papers"; it could, conceivably change even day to day as presidential contenders might be forced out of the nomination race- perhaps releasing any delegates which might have already been formally allocated to them- or delegates once in the ranks of the "Uncommitted" might begin to indicate support of a given presidential contender even before the National Conventions convene this Summer! Delegates listed as "available" in the soft count, are "not yet estimated".
 
The differences between the two counts- "hard" and "soft"- will probably first become apparent in the differences between the first tier events in caucus/convention states and those states holding binding primaries (that is, primaries where the results of the voting itself directly affect delegate allocation). To take one early (and obvious) example, the Iowa precinct caucuses on Monday 24 January 2000 did not choose one single National Convention delegate in either major party (the first Democratic National Convention delegates were not formally allocated until early May; National Convention delegates from Iowa's GOP were not be formally allocated until a month thereafter!) but it might be possible to estimate the likely breakdown of the Iowa delegation to the major parties' National Conventions from an analysis of the voting in these Iowa caucuses. Any such estimate of the support of the delegates from Iowa to either National Convention would appear in the "soft count"- but NO Iowa delegates appeared in the "hard count" immediately after 24 January (the first delegates to appear in the "hard count" were those in each major party from New Hampshire, where the primary on Tuesday 1 February 2000 formally allocated National Convention delegates as a result of the voting in that primary).
 
(available) - delegates not yet allocated
"(available)" is the number of delegates yet to be allocated.
For the hard total, these delegates are "not yet formally and/or officially allocated". For the soft counts, these delegates are "not currently estimated".


PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY TYPES


DELEGATE SELECTION PRIMARY
This is the oldest type of presidential primary - one going back to the 1904 election, at which time Florida became the first state to authorize the use of a so-called "direct primary" election to choose the state's delegates to the Democratic National Convention. (Up until the institution of this "direct primary" - that is, the choice of delegates directly by the voter in an election, the delegates to a party's National Convention were chosen through the so-called "indirect primary", in which the delegates were chosen by the procedure which today is known as the CAUCUS/CONVENTION) In the DELEGATE SELECTION type of direct presidential primary, the candidates for delegates are listed individually - either separately or as part of a slate of delegate candidates - on the ballot. In 1996, only one state - New York - still used this Delegate Selection type of primary and then only for choosing the state's district delegates to the Republican National Convention (the state GOP committee choosing the at-large delegates to the National Convention some time after the primary); New York was so old-fashioned in its use of this type that, as late as the 1980's, it still did not permit the presidential preferences of the delegate candidates to be indicated on the ballot: as a result, it was - until rather recently - nearly impossible for the voter to know just who his delegate selections would be supporting should there be an actual fight for the nomination on the floor of the National Convention!
 
All the remaining Presidential Primary types used today involve an actual "Presidential Preference" vote - one in which the voter is confronted with a ballot (or a portion thereof) with only the names of the presidential candidates for each party listed from which the voter then must then choose one candidates. The differences among the various Presidential Preference primary types which follow are based primarily on just how the breakdown of this preference vote is to be used in determining the allocation of the state's delegates to the National Convention among the contenders for the Presidential Nomination appearing on a given direct primary ballot:

 
ADVISORY PRIMARY
In recent (post-1972) practice, there are really two types of "advisory" primaries (those in which the results of the presidential preference balloting has no effect on the allocation of a state's National Convention delegates to the presidential contenders) - the "purely ADVISORY" and the "LOOPHOLE" type (which is, in a sense, a special form of "advisory" primary): the LOOPHOLE type will be considered later; we will consider the "purely ADVISORY" type to be the only ADVISORY type of primary here. In a small number of states where the delegates are actually chosen through the old-fashioned CAUCUS/CONVENTION, a non-binding presidential preference primary is held which has come to be known derisively as the "beauty contest" because of its lack of effect upon the makeup of the state's National Convention delegation. The ADVISORY type has been used in relatively few states by both major parties in recent years. Democrats in Arizona and Michigan used it in 1996.
 
WINNER-TAKE-ALL PRIMARY
With the perceived early failures of what has since become the LOOPHOLE primary type (one in which a Presidential Preference "beauty contest" was combined with a DELEGATE SELECTION type, each type on separate ballots at the same primary election: early on in the development of the "direct primary", it was hoped that the elected delegates to the National Convention would naturally support the winner of the "beauty contest" but, much of the time, the "advice" of those who voted in the "beauty contest" presidential preference poll was ignored by the delegates chosen separately), there was an attempt made to require a state's delegates, still to be chosen separately, to support - and vote at the Convention as a unit for - the winner of the presidential preference vote; this became known as the "mandatory" primary and was, in its earliest form, first authorized by Maryland back in 1912 as a binding preference poll alone (without a separate DELEGATE SELECTION) in which the National Convention delegates, chosen separately by CAUCUS/CONVENTION, were, by state law, mandated (hence the name) to support the winner of the presidential preference vote, which was no longer merely a "beauty contest". Soon thereafter, many states had changed their preference voting (while still holding, at the same time, a separate DELEGATE SELECTION primary) to this newer "mandatory" type: this often, however, created an odd situation in which a majority of delegates, specifically elected as individuals or on a slate, backing a particular contender for the party's presidential nomination, might have to vote - at least during the 1st Ballot at the National Convention - for the winner of statewide presidential preference vote whom they did not, in fact, support! This anomaly led, by the early 1960's, to the evolution of the so-called "WINNER-TAKE-ALL" type of primary - essentially a return to the original type of "mandatory" primary in which a presidential preference vote alone would be held with an unlisted slate of delegates pledged to the winner of a state's preference vote automatically being elected as that state's delegation to the National Convention (something akin to the current practice - in the General Election - of a party's nominees for President and Vice President winning a plurality of a state's vote being given all that state's Electoral Votes). After the riotous Democratic National Convention of 1968 in Chicago, however, the Democratic Party began implementing a series of changes in party rules (the so-called "McGovern-Fraser reforms") that ultimately banned the WINNER-TAKE-ALL type as a method of choosing delegates to that party's National Convention; as a result, the WINNER-TAKE-ALL type has survived only in the Republican Party nominating process where it was still being used by the GOP in roughly half of the party's primaries in 1996. However, the current form of the WINNER-TAKE-ALL primary, in most cases, allocates district and at-large delegates separately so that a presidential contender might lose the statewide vote yet still, by winning a district or few, pick up all the delegates from those districts: as a result, the WINNER-TAKE-ALL type as currently used by Republicans in most states where it is found does not necessarily allocate ALL of a state's delegates to the statewide winner.
 
WINNER-TAKE-MOST
(In such cases, it has become the fashion- over recent Presidential Election cycles- to use the term 'WINNER-TAKE-MOST' [as it is likely the Statewide winner of the most votes in the Presidential Primary will not necessarily gain the pledges of all that State's delegates yet still pick up the lion's share of same]. In a sense, such a 'WINNER-TAKE-MOST' primary [which, again, has become the more prevalent on the Republican side] is but a variant of the LOOPHOLE PRIMARY [see below]- although, unlike in the LOOPHOLE type, the pledging of delegates to presidential contenders is here generally tied to the results of the voting in the Presidential [preference] Primary itself: obviously, however, were a Statewide winner to also win the popular vote in all sub-State units [more usually Congressional Districts] to which those delegates not at-large are assigned, such a 'WINNER-TAKE-MOST' Primary would then become, functionally, WINNER-TAKE-ALL [and, therefore, 'WINNER-TAKE-MOST' is no less banned from use within the Democratic Party nominating process than is pure WINNER-TAKE-ALL]).
 
A principal difference between WINNER-TAKE-ALL and WINNER-TAKE-MOST is that, in WINNER-TAKE-ALL, the algorithm [that is: the procedure through which the results of a Primary (or caucuses) are transformed into National Convention delegates pledged to whom] is set ahead of the voting taking place (for example, it is known- going into a Primary [or caucuses]- that 'a candidate gaining at least the plurality of the vote in a given jurisdiction gains the pledges of all delegates in said jurisdiction') while, in WINNER-TAKE-MOST, the algorithm becomes known only after the voting has already taken place (because the algorithm itself is determined by the voting itself: for example, 'a candidate gains the pledges of all delegates in a given jurisdiction if and only if he/she has received at least a majority of the vote in said jurisdiction; otherwise the delegates in that same jurisdiction are shared with one or more other candidates').
 
PROPORTIONAL PRIMARY
Seeing the WINNER-TAKE-ALL primary as unfairly reducing the input of significant minority factions within the party in the presidential nominating process, the McGovern-Fraser reforms of the early-to-mid 1970's successfully promoted the so-called "PROPORTIONAL" type of primary as an alternative to be used in the Democratic Party's nomination process. In the PROPORTIONAL type of presidential preference primary, the district delegates are apportioned among the top vote-getters in each (usually congressional, but occasionally state legislative) district while the at-large delegates are apportioned among the top vote-getters statewide by the percentage of the vote received above a certain threshold (most often 15 percent: a figure actually mandated by the rules of the Democratic Party since 1992). This is the system used by the vast majority of the states holding presidential primaries in the Democratic Party; the Republican party (where WINNER-TAKE-ALL primaries are still permitted) uses it in far fewer states than the Democrats and, in the vast majority of these, the GOP usually started using the PROPORTIONAL type only because Democrat-dominated State Legislatures of the mid-to-late 1970's passed laws forcing both parties to use this type of presidential preference primary. The major difference between the two parties' PROPORTIONAL primaries is in the thresholds used by the Republicans, which can vary from as much as 20 percent or more to as little as virtually 0 percent. (as noted below, the Democrats are currently required by party rules to use a 15 percent threshold in all their PROPORTIONAL primaries).
 
THRESHOLD TO BE USED IN "PROPORTIONAL" PRIMARIES UNDER DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION RULES:

All PROPORTIONAL Primaries, used to allocate delegates to the Democratic National Convention in proportion to the primary vote received by each presidential contender, MUST use a 15 percent "threshold" (no more, no less) - that is, district delegates are to be allocated proportionally to a presidential contender based on the primary vote in a given district ONLY IF that candidate has received at least 15 percent of the primary vote in that district while at-large delegates and pledged PLEOs (a form of "superdelegate") are to be allocated proportionally to presidential contenders based on the primary vote statewide ONLY IF that candidate has received at least 15 percent of the statewide primary vote. However, should NO presidential candidate receive at least 15 percent of the primary vote in either a district or statewide, the threshold in such district or statewide shall be the percentage received by the top vote-getter minus 10 percent (for example: should there be, say, 15 contenders on the ballot of a PROPORTIONAL primary and the top vote-getter only receives 14 percent of the vote, say, statewide - the new threshold for allocating at-large delegates and pledged PLEOs would be 4 percent [14%-10] (not 15 percent because no candidate would have reached that original threshold in this example) and only candidates receiving at least 4 percent in this hypothetical instance would be allocated said delegates proportionally)... I can only hope all this "mumbo-jumbo" is clear enough (hey, at least I THINK I understand it!)... these "Threshold" rules are mandated for ALL Democratic PROPORTIONAL type primaries as I have indicated above.

 
BONUS PRIMARY
In the early 1980's, what would evolve into the moderate so-called "New Democrat" movement began its challenge to the more liberal wing of the Democratic Party which had been the force behind the McGovern-Fraser reforms of the 1970's; the second-wave Hunt "counter-reforms" of the Democratic Party's primary process in the early 1980's reflected this struggle between factions within the party. Several changes in the Democratic Party rules were introduced to put the brakes on the trend toward the splintering of the party seen somewhat during the 1976 pre-Convention period and then even more so in the 1980 nomination battle: one change which survives to the present day was the creation of the "superdelegate" - a party functionary (U.S. Senator, Governor, Member of Congress, State Legislative leader, Party leader, etc.) who would remain officially- if only nominally- Uncommitted until the Convention itself had convened, thereby theoretically bringing the perceived wisdom of the party leadership to the final choice of a nominee while still retaining the increased influence of the party's voting rank-and-file created by the large-scale adoption of the PROPORTIONAL primary among Democrats; this "superdelegate" survives nowadays in the form of the Unpledged PLEO. Yet another change made in the early 1980's was the adoption of the so-called "BONUS" type of primary. In the BONUS primary, a handful of at-large (and, sometimes, some district) delegates are not, at first, apportioned among the presidential contenders receiving more than the required threshold of the vote in what is otherwise a PROPORTIONAL primary; rather, these "held-aside" delegates are later allocated to the overall winner of the primary as a "bonus", hence the name. The proponents of this type of primary referred to it as "Enhanced Reward" while its opponents derisively called it "Winner-take-More", an obvious attempt to link it to the WINNER-TAKE-ALL type abandoned by the Democrats for 1976. It was used by several states in both 1984 and 1988 until a third wave of "re-reform" sweeping the Democratic Party banned the use of this BONUS type of primary as a method of allocating the party's delegates beginning in 1992; there is nothing, however, to prevent the Republicans in a given state from using a BONUS primary as the GOP does not operate its primaries under centralized, nationwide party rules as do the Democrats.
 
LOOPHOLE PRIMARY
The "LOOPHOLE" type of primary, in essence, is an updated version of what is the oldest form of the Presidential Preference (as opposed to DELEGATE SELECTION) primary - dating back to when Oregon enacted the very first statute authorizing just such a primary for the 1912 election. In this, what is really the original form of the ADVISORY primary, there was both a presidential preference "beauty contest" vote and a separate DELEGATE SELECTION primary held at the same time: the voter had the opportunity to indicate a preferred candidate from among the list of names of presidential contenders on the top ballot but actually elected the delegates to the National Convention as individuals or on slates listed on a separate ballot directly beneath the presidential preference one. Since the actual delegates were being elected through a separate voting procedure, the presidential preference results were merely "advisory" giving this type of primary its original sobriquet. In theory, the state's National Convention delegates were to throw their support behind - and give their votes on the Convention floor to - the winner of the presidential preference "beauty contest": however, the hopes of the early supporters of the Presidential Primary (the majority of which were of this type) were to be dashed in presidential election after presidential election as many a state's delegation often as not ignored the "advice" of the state party's rank-and-file as expressed in the preference balloting. This type of primary first got its name of "LOOPHOLE" in 1976 when many political observers and pundits realized that, in any state still using what was - in effect - the original advisory preference/delegate selection type of primary, it was theoretically possible for a candidate to win all that state's delegates despite the McGovern-Fraser reforms which had outlawed the more blatant WINNER-TAKE-ALL preference vote in favor of the PROPORTIONAL type for Democrats: all a presidential contender had to do was to elect his slates of district and at-large delegates in the bottom delegate selection balloting and it didn't much matter how he did in the top of the ballot presidential preference "beauty contest" , a convenient "loophole" for getting around the Democratic Party's ban on WINNER-TAKE-ALL primaries, hence the name - one which caught on, as it differentiated this type of "beauty contest" primary from the ADVISORY type. The LOOPHOLE type was banned in the Democratic primaries of 1980, but exemptions were made for Illinois and West Virginia - a tribute to both the Cook County, Ill. Democratic machine and West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd, respectively, being powerful enough in national Democratic Party circles to keep their states' "beauty contest" preference vote in place for that year; the subsequent Hunt "counter-reforms" restored the LOOPHOLE type as legal under Democratic Party rules for 1984 and 1988 and, while the Democratic "re-reforms" effective in 1992 had sought to discourage the use of the LOOPHOLE primary, it nevertheless survived among the Democrats in West Virginia - again, largely due to the influence of that state's Sen. Byrd on the national party hierarchy. In 1996, however, no Democratic primary was of the LOOPHOLE type. The GOP, meanwhile, has no national party rules against the use of the LOOPHOLE type and a handful of states did use it for the choosing of delegates to the Republican National Convention in 1996.
 
CAUCUS/CONVENTION
The earliest form of delegate selection for the National Conventions is the CAUCUS/CONVENTION system, which is still used in a few states. In this system, the voter does not choose the party's delegates to the National Convention through the ballot, as in a Primary (where the delegates are chosen directly by the voter or there is a presidential preference vote which determines the allocation of delegates indirectly) but, instead, participates in a "caucus" or "mass meeting" (a term more prevalent in the South) for the first "tier" (as the levels of civil divisions up through the State level are usually called in the application of this method) - a convocation of voters from a given precinct, township, ward or other relatively small civil division within a given state and one not very unlike the traditional Town Meeting prevalent in New England. In the archetypal "caucus", local supporters of the various presidential contenders are encouraged to speak at the caucus about the merits of their particular candidate and, after some discussion in the wake of these speeches, there is a vote of some sort (whether by secret ballot or by show of hands or by actually lining up behind supporters of a preferred presidential contender in order to be counted as being for that candidate) which determines who will go to the party meeting (usually a bona fide Convention) for the next highest tier (the County or Congressional or Legislative District) as a delegate from the civil division for which the caucus was held and usually having a preference for a particular presidential contender. Each tier chooses delegates to represent it at the party meeting (again, usually a Convention) for next tier. No matter how many tiers there are (usually three or four all told: local civil division, County or equivalent [optional and most often skipped in smaller states], some kind of sub-state District often larger than a County and then the State as a whole), the last tier - the State party Convention - usually chooses the at-large (that is, statewide) delegates to the party's National Convention while the penultimate tier - the Convention for the level next below the State (usually some kind of sub-state District [Congressional, Legislative, multi-county Judicial]) - chooses the state's district delegates to the National Convention from that district. What is known today as the CAUCUS/CONVENTION was actually originally referred to as the "primary", but when the Primary as we have come to know it (an actual election by ballot) first came into use in the early 20th century, the old system came to be called the "indirect primary" to differentiate itself from the newfangled "direct primary"; the term CAUCUS/CONVENTION, however, came into vogue by the 1960's to eliminate any confusion between these two very different methods of ultimately choosing a state's delegates to a party's National Convention. Up through the 1976 election, which accelerated the number of states holding Primaries, the CAUCUS/CONVENTION method was the usual method for choosing delegates to the National Convention: it was a system easily controlled - and, in many cases, manipulated - by the party hierarchy. In the Democratic Party of the early 1970's, the McGovern-Fraser reforms - seeking to reduce the influence of "bossism" in the nominating process - encouraged many states to change over from this method of choosing National Convention delegates to the Primary and, since Primaries are elections regulated by state law and the majority of statehouses in the 1970's came to be controlled by Democrats, the GOP was also forced - by laws in the several states - to begin turning away from the CAUCUS/CONVENTION. In 1960, there were only 16 presidential primaries: by 1980, there were 35 and, in 2000, there will be 45 presidential primaries - only 7 states will be using the CAUCUS/CONVENTION alone in 2000 and the 40-year trend toward states using some kind of presidential primary is very clearly seen in the statistics.


VOTER ELIGIBILITY

CLOSED PRIMARY OR CAUCUS
In a Closed Primary or Caucus, only registered members of a party may vote in that party's primary: Democrats may only vote in the Democratic primary, Republicans may only vote in the Republican primary and Independents (those not registered with either major party) are not permitted to vote in either major party's primary.
 
OPEN PRIMARY OR CAUCUS
In an Open primary or caucus, any voter - regardless of party registration - may vote in the primary of either major party (but not both!): Democrats may, if they wish, pass up their own party's primary to vote in the Republican primary, while Republicans may choose to pass up their own party's primary to vote in the Democratic primary; Independents may vote in either major party's primary. In addition, a voter's party affiliation is unaffected by which primary he or she might have chosen to vote in: for example, a Democrat who chooses to vote in the Republican primary remains a registered Democrat and an Independent who votes in the Democratic primary remains a member of neither major party.
 
MODIFIED OPEN PRIMARY OR CAUCUS (for 2000 and 2004)
In a Modified open Primary or Caucus, persons registered with one of the major parties usually may only vote in that party's primary: generally, Democrats may only vote in the Democratic primary, while Republicans may only vote in the Republican primary. However, unlike in a Closed Primary or Caucus, Independents may choose to vote in either party's primary - though there are usually provisions which automatically make an Independent a registered member of whichever party the primary of which he or she has chosen to vote in: this tends to keep the number of Independents who take advantage of their privilege to vote in a Modified open primary or caucus relatively low (making what is called a Modified open primary or caucus, in fact, more of a "modified closed primary or caucus" in its actual operation!)
 
However, in some Modified Open states, a Democrat voting in the Republican primary or a Republican voting as a Democrat automatically changes one's party affiliation as well; this has tended to reduce such "crossover voting" between the two major parties in those Modified Open states which practice this automatic change in party registration- for many registered party members might very well think twice before casting a primary vote which would have such an impact on their party affiliation.
 
MODIFIED PRIMARY OR CAUCUS (for 2008 and 2012)
The national leaderships of the two major parties have never been entirely comfortable with those states having such "open" primary/caucus laws; to their minds, the only persons who- for the most part- should be entitled to vote in a state party's presidential primary or caucus are those who are registered members of the party: though- somewhat begrudgingly, perhaps- the concept that, in an "open" primary or caucus, those who are truly Independent by virtue of not being affiliated with either major party (or, for that matter, ANY party- even third parties) should be allowed to vote in either major party's presidential primary or caucus as they might choose (as long as they are not permitted to vote in both!) has seemingly become more and more acceptable.
 
Thus, the "Modified" Primary/Caucus-- the "modification" being such that such a primary or caucus is neither completely CLOSED (restricted to Party members- at least in one of the two major parties) nor OPEN (allowing members of a major party to vote in the Primary of the other major party).
 
In the more common version of the "Modified" Primary, persons registered with one of the major parties usually may only vote in that party's primary: generally, Democrats may only vote in the Democratic primary, while Republicans may only vote in the Republican primary. However, unlike in a Closed Primary or Caucus, Independents may choose to vote in either party's primary - though there are many States utilizing this Modified Primary/Caucus in which there are provisions which automatically make an Independent a registered member of whichever party the primary of which he or she has chosen to vote in: this tends to keep the number of Independents who might take advantage of their privilege to vote in a Modified primary or caucus relatively low.
 
In some Modified Primary/Caucus states, members of one major party ARE permitted to vote in the Primary or participate in the Caucus of the other major party; however, the usual practice in such cases is such that a Democrat voting in the Republican primary or caucus- or a Republican voting in a Democratic primary or caucus- automatically changes one's party affiliation as well; this has tended to reduce such "crossover voting" between the two major parties in those Modified Primary/Caucus states which practice this automatic change in party registration, even while allowing members of one major party to participate in the other major party's "delegate selection event" of their own volition- for many registered party members might very well think twice before casting a primary vote which would have such an impact on their party affiliation (making this particular variant of the Modified primary/caucus, in fact, more of a "modified closed primary or caucus" than a "modified open" one in its actual operation!).
 
In recent Presidential Election cycles, there has been a trend toward allowing, in what would otherwise be considered OPEN Primary/Caucus states, the major parties to only count those votes cast by registered party members (and, perhaps, Independents [at the Party's own discretion]) in determining the allocation of pledged delegates to the party's National Convention amongst the contenders for that party's Presidential Nomination (in effect, tossing out the votes of registered members of the other major party- if not also those of Independents as well!). It is, therefore, quite possible- in a state which has so altered its otherwise Open Primary/Caucus- that a presidential contender might not receive the full complement of National Convention delegates to which he or she would have been entitled had ALL the votes (not just those of registered party members and, perhaps, Independents) cast in his/her Party's primary or caucus been utilized to determine (however directly or indirectly) the make-up of that state's delegation to the party's National Convention; the result of such a scenario might, someday, very well be a legal battle in the courts and/or a floor fight (with a concomitant roll call vote) at the National Convention- or, perhaps, both!- over just how many Convention delegates presidential contenders should be entitled to have pledged to them as a result of such an OPEN primary or caucus effectively turned into a MODIFIED one: this would be more especially probable where the differences in the makeup of the delegation(s) from one or more states between that derived from counting ALL votes (even those cast in a state's primary or caucus by members of the other major party) and that derived from counting only those the state party has determined to be valid would be seen to be the difference between a given contender's winning or losing in the Presidential Nomination balloting during the Roll Call of the States at the party's National Convention... stay tuned should just such a scenario (however unlikely) ever develop over the pledges of a National Convention delegation from an otherwise OPEN primary State!

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