.... and then, when the first round of voting finishes, everything we have talked about gets thrown out, and an entire new set of rules comes in. Nobody is bound to anything they did previously. Sheesh. No wonder our system is so fucked.
Not so. Each state part gets to draft their own rules; that is why it's so difficult to know how many delegates each candidate is or will be awarded so far. Some states' delegates would be released after round one, some after round two and so on. However, the candidates themselves have some say in who the delegates are, so many will be voting their conscience (or lack thereof) anyway, so being released might not mean too much. It gets very complicated very fast. It's almost as if they didn't really plan for this to actually ever happen :).... and then, when the first round of voting finishes, everything we have talked about gets thrown out, and an entire new set of rules comes in. Nobody is bound to anything they did previously.