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Cathy Wurzer and Jon Collins

RNC official: GOP delegates not bound to caucus results on 1st ballot

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Republicans will select delegates this weekend at the state convention in Duluth to represent Minnesota at the national convention in Cleveland in July.

Delegates will be selected based on results of a presidential straw poll conducted during party caucuses on March 1. The most support during that poll went to U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio rather than the party's now-presumptive nominee Donald Trump.

While the Republican Party of Minnesota's chair says the delegates are required to echo the straw poll in the first ballot, a member of the Republican rules committee, Curly Haugland, said that isn't necessarily the case. Haugland said it's a misconception that delegates are bound to vote for specific candidates.

"From the very beginning, the Republican Party has always emphasized the concept of freedom of conscience for delegates, and trusting the delegates to be responsible and responsive to the people they represent, but at all times being able to express their personal conscience and wishes when they vote at the conventions," Haugland said.

If the primaries are designed to select the nominees, Haugland said the party's rules should reflect that. But his reading of the current rules is that delegates to the convention can vote their conscience on any ballot.

"We all need to understand that the party as a private association makes its own rules, it has for a long time," Haugland said. "The will of the people as expressed in primaries has been touted as an excuse to ignore the rules of the party."

With Donald Trump the only Republican candidate still in the race, Haugland said he doesn't expect that his reading of the rules will affect this year's convention.