“Did you ever have to make up your mind? Pick up on one and leave the other behind? It’s not often easy and not often kind. Did you ever have to make up your mind?” – John Sebastian

I almost wrote this column a couple of months ago. Upon second thought I decided a column about the Republican and Democratic national conventions would be better if published closer to the dates of the conventions.

I am glad I waited. Had I written this earlier, a main theme would have been how these conventions have become passe, chiefly serving as marketing events for the two parties. Yet, this year intrigue abounds as we approach both conventions.

For the Republicans, who convene next week in Milwaukee, inquiring minds want to know whom Donald Trump will choose as his vice-presidential running mate and if that announcement will come before or during the convention. The only hard-hitting political insight I can provide here is his choice will not be Mike Pence.

The greater fascination aligns with the Democratic convention next month in Chicago. After an underwhelming debate performance by President Joe Biden, there is sure to be some political machinations among the Democratic ranks about a possible mutiny from supporting the Biden and Kamala Harris ticket.

Is this even possible? Did we not just go through a nationwide presidential primary this winter and spring to decide this? What I lack in political insight, I hope I can make up for in explaining the process.

For Republicans and Democrats, state parties follow general guidelines, established at the previous national convention, for selecting delegates who will vote for the party’s presidential candidate at the next convention. The state parties then set more specific rules under those guidelines.

If you voted a Democratic ballot in the March 5 primary election, you could vote for actual delegates to send to the national convention in addition to voting for the candidates running for elected office as a Democrat. State party leaders also choose approximately a third of Alabama’s delegates who do not appear on the ballot.

Up until this year’s primary, the Alabama Republican Party had a similar system where primary voters chose most of the delegates for the national convention. Alexander Willis, of Alabama Daily News, reported state Republicans approved a change in party bylaws last year to move away from this system.

Alabama Republican Party leaders at the state level and the congressional district levels now choose the delegates due to this change. Republican primary voters only vote for their preferred candidate for president without voting on individual delegate positions.

Convention delegates for both parties pledge to vote for the candidate they were backing at the time they were elected or appointed.

However, this pledge is not binding, according to Notre Dame Law School professor Derek Muller in his interpretation of the ground rules established in the call for this year’s Democratic National Convention.

If delegates at the convention have lost faith in Biden’s ability to win the election, they could vote for someone else even if that person is not officially nominated at the convention. Should no candidate receive a majority after the delegates cast their first vote, delegates are released from any notion of obligation to the candidate to whom they were pledged.

Votes would continue to be taken until one candidate finally eclipses the threshold of a majority of delegates and becomes the party’s nominee.

Biden has almost unanimous support of pledged delegates, so basically half of the convention’s delegates would have to renege on their pledge to vote for Biden.

While this is all possible, it is also unlikely without Biden himself withdrawing from the race or a personal health crisis taking place. Although, if one of these scenarios did happen, we could get a glimpse of a national convention operating as originally intended as candidates hustle to hold their delegates while reaching out to other candidates’ delegates to bring them into their camp.

The most extreme example of a fractured convention was the 1924 Democratic National Convention. A 2016 article by Jack Shafer, of Politico, explained how a deeply divided Democratic Party had to vote 103 times over 16 days before settling on John W. Davis, of West Virginia, as a compromise candidate.

Parties try their best to avoid these situations to prevent the party from splintering over the selected candidate. Davis is a prime example as he was trounced in the general election by Republican Calvin Coolidge with a sizable number of disgruntled Democratic voters going with third-party candidate Robert La Follette instead.

Similarly, a divided Democratic Party coming out of August’s convention would essentially doom any candidate, Biden or otherwise, from winning in November.