Whether on the playground or in presidential politics, rules can’t be changed midway through the process just because they become inconvenient. But that’s what Massachusetts state Republican leaders are trying to do by invoking dubious technicalities to try to remove Ron Paul supporters who were chosen as delegates to the party’s national convention in Tampa.

The state GOP has good reason to be concerned about a process that allows fervent activists to flood local caucuses and play a disproportionate role in choosing convention delegates. Those delegates will nonetheless be pledged to Mitt Romney, who, after all, won 72 percent of votes in the March presidential primary, versus less than 10 percent for Paul. But according to party rules, Romney’s campaign had more to do to get its own people chosen as the delegates to the Tampa convention; they had to show up at local party caucuses, the obscure gatherings where delegates are actually chosen. They didn’t, at least not to the degree that Paul’s supporters did. To the extent that Paul’s zealous supporters abided by the caucus rules in place, they deserve the delegates that they won. Attempts to throw out scores of caucus votes on technical issues, which is what party leaders would be doing by ignoring provisional ballots the rules had allowed for, should be abandoned.