Donald Trump, John Kasich, Ted Cruz

Pictured from left to right are, Republican presidential candidates, Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)

(Alan Diaz)

This is, potentially, a great party building moment for the Pennsylvania Republican Party.

For the first time in at least 36 years, Keystone State GOP voters have a real say in the selection of their presidential nominee as Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and John Kasich march toward the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

The enthusiasm is as measurable as the nearly 90,000 Pennsylvanians who have switched into the Republican Party this winter for the chance to help select a presidential candidate.

Here's the bad part.

Unless those voters are really paying attention, they may or may not be influencing Pennsylvania's voice in the choice at the July convention the way they want to.

That's because of arcane delegate selection rules in Pennsylvania that literally leave voters flying blind in the selection of 54 delegates who are elected, three at a time, in each of the state's 18 Congressional districts.

Those delegate candidates will be presented to the voters by name only, according to state officials. So an unwitting voter in the 4th Congressional District covering Harrisburg, for example, will see 15 names vying for three spots.

If they don't skip over it at all.

Some of those names may be recognizable; most will not. Especially in Pennsylvania's badly-gerrymandered districts.

Many voters, faced with that list, might do what political scientists say comes naturally: look for people they know personally or start from the top and work down.

But in this election, there is no guarantee that that's going to get you the result you want.

Here's a prime illustration of how badly skewed this division between the popular vote for the candidates - essentially the ultimate public opinion poll - and the separate election of convention delegates can be:

Say you are a Donald Trump supporter living in Carlisle, at the far southern end of Pennsylvania's 11th Congressional District.

You vote for Trump on the presidential ballot, and then turn your attention to the delegate list.

You don't know any of the names, and since none of the bunch are from Cumberland County, you just take the first three names on the ballot: Dan Mosel, Philip Bear and Richard Adams.

Our hypothetical Trump supporter would have just voted to send two Ted Cruz supporters and one staunchly uncommitted delegate to the convention in Cleveland, when there are at least two other declared Trump supporters running.

(Democratic Party voters do not face this challenge. The Pennsylvania Democrats' rules require a proportionate allocation of all directly-elected delegate seats to all candidates with at least 15 percent of the vote.

And, for good measure, individual candidates are identified by candidate preferences.)

Savvy national campaigns, you might think, would be on this, and ready with poll workers pressing palm cards into voters' hands at the polls identifying the candidates supporting their guy.

Right now, though, it's unclear to what degree that will happen on April 26.

The Cruz campaign, which appears the best-organized at the grassroots level in the midstate, promised this week that there will be evident efforts to promote its slate in the various Congressional districts.

PennLive's efforts to reach the Trump - which also had pledged candidates running - and Kasich campaigns for this story were not successful so it was not immediately clear how involved they'll be.

In the interim, there are some community forums planned. Some people are calling into radio talk shows, or trying out social media platforms.

To the degree that there is an information vacuum, however, it is likely that the delegate candidates with the biggest war chests and some degree of regional name recognition - like congressmen, former congressmen or county commissioners - might have a built-in advantage.

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The delegate candidates themselves come in three basic models.

Uncommitted, but pledging to vote for the top vote-getter in the Congressional district that is sending them.

Unabashedly committed to one of the candidates.

Uncommitted to anything, in the interest of letting the race play itself out completely.

Most of the delegate candidates reached in PennLive's survey are in the first category.

They say they owe a first duty to represent the people who elected them, and they hope that their commitment to do so alleviates some of the confusion facing voters this year.

It is also a way, they argue, to reinforce that the selection really is in the voters' hands - if only for the first ballot.

Rick Morelli , a Luzerne County Republican who personally supports Trump, is an example of this group.

"The process is flawed," Morelli said in a recent interview with PennLive. "I get that all the time. So the only ethical way for any delegate to vote is the way that the people want."

Then, there are the candidates who are openly pledging their support to the candidates.

In Central Pennsylvania, that means, mainly, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.

Both campaigns have committed supporters in each of the four districts we surveyed.

The Kasich campaign, meanwhile, which got off to a poor organizational start in Pennsylvania because most of the Ohio governor's would-be supporters were split among Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Chris Christie in the early going, appears to be pinning its hopes on winning the popular vote and amassing its delegates that way.

Finally, there are a couple "close-to-the-vest" delegate candidates, that handful who say they are totally uncommitted now, and are asking voters to trust them to make the best decision between now and the convention for the party.

Franklin County Commissioner Bob Thomas is in this camp, as is U.S. Rep. Bill Shuster, the 9th District Congressman from Everett, and former state Rep. Gordon Denlinger of Lancaster County.

Thomas said last week his only commitment is to help deliver the Republican candidate "who we're confident could win in the fall, and that can change so much from today until July (when the GOP convention is held) ...

"That's why I think we've got to keep all our options open."

Some might say that sounds like a party boss mentality, but these political professionals say they are simply asking voters to trust their professional experience and investment in the party.

It is electability in November, after all, that matters most, they say.

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One thing is for sure. This Pennsylvania way is an outlier.

A University of Georgia lecturer who tracks the delegate selection process nationally shows Pennsylvania Republicans to be the only party in any primary state that elects delegates directly with no indication of a candidate preference.

"In terms of the mechanics, it's absolutely an outlier," FrontloadHQ.com editor Josh Putnam said. "The onus is really on the delegate candidates, the presidential campaigns and the voters to figure out who these people are."

It has worked this way for decades in the Keystone State, and the Republican State Committee - which set the rules for 2016 last fall - has never really seriously considered a change.

There was one change in the rules for this cycle: The decision to commit 17 at-large delegates selected by the state committee to the statewide popular vote winner, again for the first ballot alone.

But the district delegate process was left untouched.

That is in large part, according to State Committee member Jim Roddey of Allegheny County, due to the fact that there hasn't been a primary that mattered here on the Republican side since at least 1980, when George Bush the father was trying to come back on eventual nominee Ronald Reagan.

2016 has caused a fresh look at the situation, and many people - including county chairs from around the state - are acknowledging that the party should try to do better in the future.

"I do see it as a problem, and I believe people will go back and look at this," said Alex Shorb, chair of the York County Republican Committee. "I hope the power is placed more firmly in the hands of the people going forward."

There are many ways that could happen:

A winner-take-all primary that sees the popular vote winner in a given state receiving all of its delegates on a first convention ballot.

An allocation of delegates according to vote shares earned either statewide or at Congressional district results.

Or, as a handful of states still do, retain the current system of direct delegate election, but with a requirement that convention candidates list for voters who they are supporting.

But those are issues for another day.

For now, the 2016 primary is upon us. And good luck to everybody in trying to discern what that means.