Why is “Uninstructed Delegation” an option on Wisconsin’s presidential preference ballot?
(WFRV) – When voters get their presidential preference ballots on Tuesday, they’ll pick their party and then choose their respective candidate. One option they can pick in either party is “uninstructed delegation,” but what does that mean exactly?
“One thing we often forget with primary elections is that for president, you’re asking delegates to go to a national party convention,” Lawrence University professor of government Arnold Shober said. “And so if you don’t want Trump or Biden or one of the other listed candidates, you can say, ‘okay, I’d like a delegate who would go to the convention and make a decision there.'”
Wisconsin has held presidential primary elections since 1912. Before that, delegates would select candidates behind closed doors through negotiations and, at times, bribery.
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“Those delegates could go to the convention and kind of do politics like they did in the old days,” Shober said. “Listen to the candidates, listen to supporters of the candidates, and then make a choice at the convention.”
Since 1976, Wisconsin has offered the uninstructed delegate option in some form, allowing voters to have more flexibility in expressing their opinions.
“It’s an opportunity to give voters the choice to say I don’t have enough information or I don’t have a solid preference, let’s let the delegates do the job on their own,” Shober said.
Most states do not have uninstructed delegation as an option on their ballots; Wisconsin is one of 16 states that are offering the bipartisan option in 2024 in some form. Shober says that it carries much more meaning in other states than Wisconsin, but that national party leaders will only take notice if a high percentage of their supporters select that option.
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“Typically, in Wisconsin, that line does not attract many votes. But in other states, it’s much more common, 10-15% of the vote goes to an uninstructed delegation,” he said. “If it’s not large, I think they rationally will not do very much because you don’t want to rock the boat.”
Of the states that have held their primaries so far, Michigan, Minnesota, Hawaii, and Missouri account for the 23 uncommitted Democratic delegates.
