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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a rally at Griffiss International Airport on Tuesday, April 12, in Rome, N.Y. | AP Photo RNC Rules Committee member: Trump will get nomination with 1,100 delegates

Donald Trump can fall short of an absolute majority of delegates and still be the Republican presidential nominee, a Republican National Committee Rules Committee member predicted on Wednesday.

“If Donald Trump exceeds 1,100 votes, he will become the nominee, even though he may not have 1,237,” Georgia lawyer Randy Evans told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

But if the GOP presidential front-runner doesn’t surpass the 1,000-delegate mark, Evans said it could lead to a days-long contested convention.

“And then in the middle there’s that gray area between 1,000 and 1,100, and that’s where the unbound delegates or the delegates that have been released by other candidates come into play to see if there are enough of those to get either [Ted] Cruz or Trump over the finish line,” he said.

Trump agreed that he should be the nominee, even if he falls short of the magic number. “It certainly makes sense to me because I would be many hundreds of delegates ahead of both competitors, in addition to having millions more votes,” he told DailyMail.com in an email Wednesday.

RNC spokesman Michael Short rebutted Evans, tweeting that the eventual nominee needs 1,237 delegates. “Period. No ands, ifs or buts,” he wrote.

Evans later clarified his remarks, telling a reporter that he wasn't suggesting Trump would win the nomination outright with less than 1,237 delegates, but if he's close enough the real estate mogul could gain enough unbound delegates to win.

Cruz’s campaign has been outmaneuvering Trump on securing delegates in preparation for what’s likely to be an open convention in July. The Texas senator swept Colorado’s convention system this past weekend, winning all 34 of the state’s available delegates.

Cruz, however, trails Trump by nearly 200 delegates. John Kasich has no mathematical path to securing the nomination outright but has vowed to win at a contested convention. The Ohio governor has just 143 delegates, though, which is less than Marco Rubio, who suspended his campaign about a month ago. Kasich has picked up zero new delegates since Rubio left the race on March 15.

Two delegates from each state, Washington, D.C., and five U.S. territories comprise the Rules Committee, which will determine the procedures the convention will adopt. If Rule 40 (b), which was created in 2012 and requires the nominee to have won at least eight states, remains unchanged, it would exclude Kasich from winning the nomination, limiting the convention to a floor fight between the Trump and Cruz campaigns.