Tag Archives: politics

Unconventional Facts About Conventions: Democratic Convention

Posted on by

We continue our look at interesting facts about conventions past and present. The Democrats are the focus of today's post, with their convention slated for July 25-27 in Philadelphia, PA.

While the Democratic candidates' delegate counts heading into the conventions may not be as close as the Republicans', a nominee still needs to have at least 2,383 delegates out of 4,765 to secure the nomination. What gets a bit complicated is the Democratic Party's use of superdelgates, as they are not bound to align their votes with the outcome of a state's primary or caucus. While this seems counter intuitive to the democratic process, it actually falls in line with what the founding fathers envisioned. The Constitution originally allowed only state legislatures to elect U.S. senators until passage of the 17th Amendment. This was seen as part of our system of checks and balances to protect against votes of the "uneducated masses."  Continue reading →

Unconventional Facts About Conventions: Republican Convention

Posted on by

The 2016 Democratic and Republican conventions look to be full of drama and historical significance. With the wild election cycle this year, we were inspired to look beyond the basics and find some interesting facts about how these conventions are organized and how they run.[Tweet "We were inspired to find some interesting facts about the GOP convention. #GovEventsBlog"]

Cleveland and Philadelphia will play host to the Republicans and Democrats respectively. For host cities, besides the revenue brought in by the influx of conventioneers, the convention provides an opportunity to highlight what their town has to offer to an international audience. Selection committees look at a number of factors when choosing host cities including available venues and infrastructure. In fact, Baltimore hosted many of the early conventions because it was an accessible port on the eastern seaboard. With the arrival of the transcontinental railroad system, the Midwest became a more viable location and has remained popular. In fact, Chicago has hosted Democratic and Republican conventions 25 times - more than any other city. Continue reading →