Appearing on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show on Monday night, Ron Paul supporter and former Massachusetts Republican Party delegate Evan Kenney explained how the party’s “elite power brokers” actually made their own rules up on the spot in order to keep him and other Paul supporters out of the Republican National Convention in August.

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After Kenney, an 18-year-old, was elected to represent Massachusetts Republicans at the national convention, party officials suddenly began requiring a written affidavit swearing to vote for Mitt Romney “under pain and penalty of perjury” — a move they’d never tried before.

“My reaction was like, ‘Well, okay,'” Kenney told Maddow. “I didn’t know the rules. I was ready [to swear to vote for Mitt Romney] until my mom pointed out to me… ‘You can’t swear under pain and penalty of perjury to do something in the future, because it would never hold up in court.'”

“So I thought, you’re right, maybe I should be careful,” he explained. “After consulting with the Mass Liberty caucus, we decided to send in an affidavit that says we’re gonna follow your rules, we’re going to follow Massachusetts general law, and we’re going to follow GOP rules, which means we’re going to vote for Mitt Romney on the first ballot. But that was not enough, even though I got it in on time.”

Three days later, he claims the Massachusetts Republican Party’s chairman sent him a letter that explained Romney for President, Inc. had “just cause and irrefutable evidence that I would not vote for Mitt Romney on the first ballot. But I had a legally notarized affidavit, two of them, as well as a verbal pledge. All that was required was the verbal pledge. So, I pledged three times to vote for Mitt Romney.”

Kenney went on to blame leadership within the Massachusetts Republican Party. “These are only a few corrupt power brokers in the leadership who want to keep the party to themselves,” he said. “They don’t care that it’s 11 percent voter registration, and shrinking, in Massachusetts in the Republican Party. They just want to keep the power to themselves.”

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This video is from MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast on Monday, July 9, 2012.

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