Last week when the members of the 6th Congressional executive committee met to discuss the final details surrounding this Saturday's congressional assembly there was allegedly much consternation coming from the Ward campaign about voting rules for the assembly.

Apparently it's been whispered about that some of the Coffman and Armstrong delegates plan to vote "I abstain" during the balloting. Armstrong and Coffman delegates could make up the majority of delegates at the voting assembly despite the fact that Coffman and Armstrong will not participate in the event.

As such, according to the rules of the congressional district, "I abstain" votes will be counted in the overall vote total, thus making it more difficult for any of the candidates participating in the assembly to get to the 30% threshold required to make the primary ballot out of assembly. If no one makes the 30% threshold on the first ballot, then the votes are recast and the top two voter-getters in the second round of voting make the primary ballot once source told the Inside Edge.

Currently there are 3 candidates participating at assembly: Ted Harvey, Steve Ward and Pepito Castellanes. Since Pepito Castellanes probably has little chance of even getting 10% of the vote at assembly, we'll ignore him. A 10% vote threshold is required even to petition on to the ballot once you've participated in the assembly.

"Harvey has Douglas County pretty solid for him, so it shouldn't make much of a difference to him. He'll probably make the ballot," said one 6th CD politicker. "Ward on the other hand is kind of the odd-man out. He really has no natural constituency. He could have a real tough time making the ballot on the first vote if the voters choose to vote ‘I abstain' en mass."

That's where the irony comes in. Ward has spent much of his time campaigning and courting delegates as one of the guys who is participating in the assembly process, but he could ultimately be victimized by it.

Ward's major complaint is that Mike Coffman is working the system by using the petition method to gain access to the ballot yet using the assembly process to deny Ward access to the ballot. But in our view, that doesn't make very much sense.

Ward's claim that on the one hand Coffman lacks the necessary support to make the ballot at assembly, but yet on the other hand is strong enough to keep Ward off the ballot, is questionable.

Delegates in fact just haven't supported Ward in any great numbers. Ward's enough of a politician to know that. He doesn't seem to be spending much time complaining about Armstrong, which is really the telltale detail here.

In our view, Ward's campaign has always been a spoiler campaign aimed directly at the heart of Mike Coffman. We think he was recruited by the GOP to steal Coffman's Iraq War thunder since Ward served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The GOP did this to try to convince Coffman not to give up the Secretary of State's office. Since then Coffman has run enough of a campaign to convince leadership that he is a viable candidate to succeed Tancredo and the odds on favorite to do so. Thus the ardor that some GOP leaders felt for Ward's candidacy has cooled appreciably.

And Ward is just now figuring that out.