Under an open convention process, they could register their anger by voting on the floor for someone else.

Because of their potential role in an open convention, the party-designated delegates get special attention.

If the party and nation are lucky, we will sail through to an open convention in San Diego.

All deals are off; we have the politicians' nightmare and the pundits' dream - an open convention!

That's what an open convention is all about."

In 1817, Findlay was nominated for the post of governor in the state's first open convention.

The delegates went for Bludner in private the way they were going for him now in the open convention.

At its opening convention, the Industrial Workers of the World exhibited a "spirit of unity".

The open convention faction could watch gleefully as the surviving candidates, financially and physically drained, plodded their way toward stalemate.

By suspending his candidacy and retaining all his delegates, Mr. Simon will have more leverage at what he said would be "a wide open convention."

After he and his supporters unsuccessfully tried to obtain an "open convention" in Rosedale in early 1940 to recontest the nomination, he retired from politics.

He wasn't as active in politics as his famous father, but he was a founder of the Republican Party and attended its opening convention in 1854.

Providing a none-of-the-above option would have been "a useful and democratic thing to do," said Mr. Doctorow, adding that he still hoped for an open convention.

In 1920, the Republicans had an open convention, all right; on the 10th ballot, they nominated Warren Harding, whom one senator called "the best of the second-raters."

A1 Talk about non-candidate Democrats has become such a central theme of the Presidential campaign that speculating about an "open convention" is becoming a favorite game in the party.

Mr. Hart's re-emergence has already increased the probability that the Democrats will have an open convention in Atlanta, which could insure a winning ticket in November.

An open convention would not, of course, prevent any one of the six Democrats already in the field from becoming the choice of the delegates who convene in Atlanta.

Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the presidential nominee, gave his acceptance speech on August 28 at Invesco Field in what the party called an "Open Convention".

Kennedy eventually lost the nomination in an open convention in Chicago to Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, but his strong showing propelled him into the 1960 Presidential race.

Tanya Melich, executive director of the New York State Republican Family Life Committee, which promoted the abortion plank, said that the provision was approved in an open convention.

Retail sales will be soft for the first half of this year and perhaps the entire year, economists predicted at the opening convention sessions of the National Retail Merchants Association.

Fred McClure, the most prominent black official in the very White House until he left to become a Dallas banker, sang the national anthem at the opening convention session Monday morning.

Although the Unusual Major Jumps Over One Diamond Opening convention (UMJOODO) is often credited to him, he denies inventing it.

"But if Dukakis doesn't win Iowa and if Jesse Jackson does well, then it's possible there could be an open convention and that could change everything," Mr. Mankiewicz said.

THE leader of a dissident faction of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party has threatened to go to court if the party does not hold an open convention to select its candidate for president of Mexico.