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9 Hours of Dem Rules Committee Forges Unity

The Democratic National Convention’s Rules Committee adopted the proposed Convention  Agenda, Officer Slates, and Rules,  and a number of resolutions and charter amendments. Most importantly, one resolution calls for a Unity Reform Commission (URC) to make recommendations re  2020 Delegate Selection Rules, including reducing the role of “superdelegates.”  The Committee met for 9 hours, with long recesses while the campaign’s worked together to resolve issues.   You can follow it issue by issue at my @demrulz Twitter feed for yesterday.

Highlights of the URC:

  • [We will elect a new DNC Chair in January 2017] – 60 days thereafter the chair will establish the URC
  • It will have 21 members with Jennifer O’Malley Dillon as Chair and Larry Cohen as Vice Chair
  • Clinton appoints 9 members, Sanders 7, new DNC Chair 3
  • To report to DNC Rules and Bylaws no later than January 1, 2018; if RBC doens’t adopt recommendations in 6 months, goes to the DNC
  • To make recommendations re increasing participation, expanding use of primaries, recommendations to increase inclusiveness and reduce burdens of caucuses, including use of firehouse primaries, and uniform counting procedures
  • Recommend encouraging unaffiliated or new voters participation in elections, including same day registreation
  • Re automatic unpledged delegates, committee to recommend no change re members of Congress, Governors, and Distinguished Party Leaders (former Presidents and the like)  (about 275 delegates this year)
  • DNC members (about 450 this year) committee to recommend that they “be required” to cast their votes proportionally to state’s vote
  • To recommend ways to make party more competitive around the country, improve DNC/State partnerships, support redistricting efforts, broad base, expand downer base  and make it less dependent on large contributions.
  • To consider anything else chair and vice chair recommend.

All good. The URC proposal actually tracks the fundamental concepts I recently proposed – keep superdelegates automatic, keep elected officials unpledged, and have DNC members reflect the primary vote, although I had some modifications that should be considered.  https://demrulz.org/news/superdelegates-a-modest-proposal.  Primarily, unlike Republicans, we cannot force our delegates to support candidates they oppose or force such delegates on their candidates.  Thus if there are not enough seats supporting a certain candidate, DNC members  who don’t want to switch should be able to 1) run for regular pledged PLEO positions or 2) go to the convention as non voting delegates.  If there not enough DNC members support a candidate to fill his pledged DNC member positions, those positions would be lost.

The main issue regarding convention rules is that the Report of the Platform Committee will be presented as adopted, without additional amendments.   The Report was the result of an open process and reflects a broad progressive consensus.

Between the reports of the Platform and Rules Committees, all voices have been heard and considered and in many cases incorporated and we should be able to move forward as a unified party.

4 thoughts on “9 Hours of Dem Rules Committee Forges Unity”

  1. Would love to see a copy of the final rules. Also was a copy made available to delegates before they voted on it or was this voice only? All I saw was the temporary roll and rules reports? Perhaps I missed it, but if you could post, I would love it.
    Thanks

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