Hannah Lockhart is just 17 years old and may be the youngest delegate to attend the Republican Party's Utah County nominating convention on April 26.

In fact, she's still in high school.

Lockhart, whose father, Stan, is the state Republican Party chairman and whose mother, Becky, serves in the Utah House of Representatives, may have politics in her genes. So one might have predicted what would happen when she attended a precinct caucus meeting in a Provo precinct last month: She was elected a delegate to the GOP's county convention.

But that's also when she went under the political microscope. The precinct in which she was elected is the one where she will live when she attends BYU this spring; it's not the one in which she currently lives with her parents.

That led to a flurry of questions from political insiders about Lockhart's eligibility to serve as a delegate. Those in turn ended up as newspaper fodder.

According to longtime Utah County Republican Peggy Burdett in the Salt Lake Tribune on Tuesday, party rules require that a delegate must live in the precinct at the time of the caucus -- not just be intending to move into the precinct later.

Utah County Party Chairwoman Marian Monnahan overruled that concern and gave Lockhart the OK to participate as a delegate because she will be living in the proper precinct before the county convention, now 10 days away. Lockhart reportedly has a rental agreement in hand and will be moving to her new residence within the next day or two.

Delegates are a big deal for the GOP because they help choose candidates for the primary or general elections. If a candidate wins more than 60 percent of the delegate vote in the state convention, that person skips the primary and goes straight to the general election where the party hasn't lost a race in years.

"I'm not concerned about family members getting elected as delegates as long as it goes by the rules," Burdett told the Tribune. "The rules say you must attend the caucus where you live." The Tribune went on to say that Lockhart's nomination "appears to violate the plain language of the rules, though party leaders insist it doesn't."

"Our rules say you must live within the precinct you represent when the convention takes place -- that's the key," Monnahan was quoted as saying.

Monnahan said on Tuesday that the rules she was referring to were not the party's bylaws but part of an "instructional guide" that local official receive from state party leaders each year. The guide is used to train caucus workers. A residency requirement for delegates is not contained in the bylaws, only in those guidelines, she said.

"That's what came down, and that's what we follow," Monnahan said, adding that the instructional guide is not binding in the same way bylaws are. The guide lays out desired operating procedures. When a procedure is not in the bylaws but only in the instructional guide, local officials have discretion, Monnahan said.

"If it's not in the bylaws, I suppose you can do pretty much what you want; but if it's there, you can't," she said. That's how she justified approving Lockhart's participation as a delegate even though Lockhart didn't yet live in the precinct.

Monnahan said she believes residency to be a requirement only when a person exercises the powers of a delegate at the convention. It is not a requirement for being elected a delegate in the first place. In this case, the delegate would be living in the precinct by convention day.

No requirement for delegate residency appears in party bylaws on the Utah County Republican Party Web site, only a rule relating to caucus voting. "Only citizens who will be at least 18 years old by the next November election and who reside in the voting precinct shall be entitled to vote in the voting precinct caucus," the bylaws read.

Taken at face value, this rule would prevent a nonresident attendee from voting in the caucus. But it would not prevent that person's being elected as a delegate. On that question the bylaws are silent.

"Well, that's true," Monnahan said. "That's why we have the rules. We set up convention rules, or caucus rules, or whatever rules you want to do, as long as they're not in conflict with the bylaws. We've always just followed the instructional guide, and that was our caucus rules for that night. We never really thought about it too much."

She said her departure from those rules in allowing Lockhart to be a delegate was just "common sense," and she had the authority to decide.

Lockhart brought up her situation ahead of time and Monnahan signed off on her participation because she'll be living in an apartment in the proper precinct before April 26.

Lockhart's mother, Becky, said the family is frustrated by those who suggest that her daughter's participation was somehow improper. "The people at the meeting who elected her didn't have a problem with it," she said. "There's nothing sinister here."

People should "campaign instead of complain," she said.

The question over Lockhart's election as a delegate is one of several brought up by those challenging incumbents this year. For example, a hubbub has been raised by critics within the party mostly about process issues, including access to delegate addresses, and also about the caucus/delegate system itself, which they say tends to keep incumbents in power.

Lockhart will be graduating from UVSC this month with an associate's degree. Her charter high-school graduation will come later. She will be 18 before November.

• Daily Herald editor Randy Wright contributed to this story.