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Today, in an act of unity, the Democratic Party adopted by acclamation significant changes to our rules and guidance. For me, personally, it has been a long, long journey. I have visited numerous states — From Hawai’i to Alabama, the territory of Puerto Rico to Montana — taken flights, driven by car, and even a train, to meet with leaders around the country not only to help elect more Democrats, but to work on building excitement in the party I believe we can be for the future. We met with them to talk about the future — not the past — and how we build a more inclusive, more diverse, more trusted and transparent party.
After two years, I was not as prepared as I would have imagined for the heartfelt and thoughtful discussions that continued this weekend. Now that it is over, it is time to tell some back story and discuss what changes are really ahead, what it means for the party, and the work still left before us.
At the 2016 Democratic National Convention, in the rules committee, which can be seen at 3:15:44 into this Youtube, you can see me offering what would be the Reeves-Bonin proposal to addressing superdelegates. Today, that proposal became the guidance for the Democratic party. It isn’t as simple as to say: that proposal is the answer! My submission of this proposal was shaped by Adam’s ideas, and the ideas of others put into actionable form. This proposal was improved, significantly, through the incredible efforts of numerous members on the Rules and Bylaws Committee — who polished the concept and clarified items of the question. It was, for me, like writing a song with a decent ‘hook’ but not much else, and seeing truly brilliant minds find a way to create harmony.
Still, for me, there is a part of myself that sees it as the work I have committed an incredible amount of time and energy to accomplish.
Speaking to the members this morning, Lee Saunders, the prominent African-American leader of AFSCME noted the impact of diversity — that by relying on the pledged delegate the party would be more inclusive than ever before, respecting the diversity of our pledged delegates and empowering future leaders.
“To be leaders, sometimes, you lead by example,” said NY Alderman Michael Blake. For Vice Chair Jamie Harrison it was much more direct — that he needed to do everything possible that would help win in 2020.
I will be forever humbled to be connected in any way with the advancement of this proposal, and I thank Adam Bonin for his wisdom before 2016.
Caucus and primary structure
While everyone wants to start the discussion with unpledged delegates, I think it is more fitting we start the discussion with the changes to the system. Part of the Unity Reform Commission was to encourage primaries over caucuses, same-day voter switching, and greater participation by voters in states that have legislatures that refuse to fund primaries.
The push for these changes, even prior to the ratification of the URC, has become a point within the DNC and is already seeing progress. States like Colorado have switched from a caucus to a primary, and most recently, Idaho elected to abandon their caucus in favor of a primary. The Idaho Press:
Idaho Democrats will switch to a presidential primary, rather than a caucus, for the next presidential election in 2020.
The party announced the change during its state party convention Saturday at the College of Idaho in Caldwell.
“We’re looking to move to a system that we have a primary, so that everybody can vote,” said Van Beechler, the party’s first vice chair.
Party Chairman Bert Marley said, “It’s been obvious the last couple presidential elections that the caucus system for us, in most parts of the state, is pretty unwieldy.”
These changes aim to give more voters a chance to participate in the presidential selection process, make the results of our selection process easier to track and certify and encourage candidates to work for a whole state vote, altering campaign tactics. Party leaders believe that 2020 will feature at least 50 percent fewer caucus states, and the caucus states that remain due to failure of their state legislatures (a matter beyond party control) will be made more credible by instituting firehouse guidelines, allowing people to “drop a ballot and leave,” absentee vote, vote by paper, or other means that offer early voting options. This makes the party-run “caucus” much closer to a party-run primary, hoping to grow the number of participants.
Some have called for the party to end caucus. While I would personally favor that, I also live in a state where the state government will not authorize funds. Without a state-run primary, the costs are impossible for a party organization. Equipping a single county in Kansas with voting equipment was $12 Million dollars. Imagine a state party having to pay for enough equipment and people to run them around the state using no tax support. Based on estimates from party leadership, we figured the cost to do so in all remaining caucus states would run hundreds of millions of dollars, even if we shuffle equipment from state to state.
As a result, what we can do in states where the government refuses to pay is to make sure that the process allows for absentee or early voting, drop and go, so that people do not have to sit in a facility all day, or they can vote and leave. These solutions effectively change the way in which caucus works.
The path to leadership and transparency
Unity reforms also focused in part on path to leadership. Path to leadership is the way in which members of the Democratic Party can become leaders within the party, get involved in party structures, and have a say in the way the party operates. Much of this from the Unity proposal is aspirational, but it encourages states to lower the time frames by which members can run for internal party offices, and works to help them by providing information on what our party offices actually do.
These changes are very minor on paper, but as a matter of how the party functions, they will help assist more Democratic Party members in understanding what their party actually does and how they can participate. It is also a key step in helping get younger people opportunities at the table to represent and take an active role within the party. These changes also impact the broader goals of party transparency, both with DNC members and with the public.
Here we go: unpledged (super)delegates
The most controversial of all the changes will be the change to unpledged—sometimes called “super”—delegates. These delegates to the convention are automatic delegates that are not pledged to a presidential candidate through the primary or caucus process. Unpledged delegates represent state party chairs and vice chairs, DNC committee members, federal officers, governors, former party chairs, and dignitaries like past U.S. presidents and vice presidents.
In the 2016 election, concern was raised that these delegates influenced the outcome of primary and caucus votes by seemingly providing one candidate an on-paper edge due to early support.
This is a “perception” edge. While there is no evidence introduced during any of the meetings of either the URC or the Rules & Bylaws Committee that would show that unpledged delegates altered the result, members of both the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Bernie Sanders campaign were open and clear that the early announcement of Hillary Clinton’s clinch of the nomination prior to the California primary by calculating in unpledged delegates harmed her overall campaign efforts. Clinton campaign members made clear during the URC that the announcement by the AP was “incredibly detrimental” to their overall campaign, while Sanders supporters believed it tilted the primary results.
This is not the first time these conclusions were reached, as reform of unpledged delegates was looked at after 2008. But with sides willing to look at solutions, the goal of maintaining both the history of the party as well as an important role for leadership had to be created.
To do this, in the end, three solutions were brought forward.
The first came from the convention and was sponsored by the Unity Commission with no changes. This solution, the first solution, would “bind” automatic delegates to the result of their state only for chairs, vice chairs, and DNC members, while federal elected, DNC dignitaries, and others would remain unbound.
This solution ran into several problems that kept it from moving forward within the DNC Rules & Bylaws committee. The first is that there are 75 at-large delegates who tend to largely come from the D.C., Virginia, and Maryland areas, giving those states potentially more say—so at first, an option was made to have these members placed on the overall delegate returns after all caucuses and primaries.
The second problem revolved around rules within the party that prevent forcing someone from voting against their own conscience. Let’s say George Wallace returns and wins your state. Under this proposal, members would be forced to have a vote registered to their name of “DNC Member XYZ, George Wallace” which would be recorded permanently for all history. There are already charter rules that prevent forcing someone to vote against their own conscience, creating more rules that would have to be changed to implement this method.
Finally, these changes would require a two-thirds majority vote for a charter amendment, and also may, in fact, require more than one vote of a two-thirds majority in order to be implemented. Because changes would have to be made within both the rules and the call of the convention document, impacting different segments, an argument was made by former chair Don Fowler in an early meeting that such a proposal would be a “serious undertaking” and “could strand us with absolutely nothing.”
Whether or not Fowler’s assertion was right was not tested by legal counsel, but the potential of running a vote which would require multiple two-thirds votes of approval—or even one vote of two-thirds approval—was viewed by the committee as a problem that could not be surmounted.
This proposal was followed by another option, offered by DNC member Frank Leone of Virginia. This option called the “pooled vote option,” would cast votes by state, rather than by person, at the convention. So, let’s say Kansas. Rather than say “chair votes X, vice chair votes X, DNC committeeman votes Y,” and “DNC committeewoman votes X,” the vote instead would be delivered as a pool, i.e. “Kansas votes 3/1.” Objections to this system were that it would completely remove the place of DNC members from having their vote registered in any way at all, and that pooling would also violate other rules, again taking us back to earlier objections that this would take multiple votes.
A third option put forward to the group came from the convention. This proposal was a bit simpler, in that it would not require a two-thirds vote, but rather a simple majority as a rule and not a charter change. This proposal would impact ALL unpledged delegates, of all forms, in a way that simplifies the process of selecting a president by honoring the majority will of the pledged delegates first. That option is that unpledged delegates (super delegates) do not vote on the first round ballot.
Tom Perez, speaking in favor of this proposal in an earlier meeting in Washington, D.C., spoke about this resolution, saying that our party respects the voter as the “most important” voice in our process by expanding primaries and implementing this change,
Ken Martin said this proposal could be the right idea, with two key changes. The first is a guarantee that unpledged delegates’ votes count in any round upon acclamation. So, if the vote is taken and a clear nominee is chosen, all votes are presented on the rolls, for history’s sake, as supporting our nominee. Yvette Lewis echoed this sentiment, noting that as a matter of history it was important for many persons of color who are DNC members to look back at history and see his or her name (“Yvette Lewis—Barack Obama”) as an official document from the 2008 convention.
This add-on was quickly adopted. The other addition is a pre-acclamation note. What this says is, should a candidate reach 60 percent of all pledged delegates upon certification of the delegates by the party secretary after all primaries and caucuses are concluded, then the party officially has a nominee, and unpledged delegates are free to vote in the first round as well.
There are too many who believe this solution was offered to placate a former presidential candidate. But many of the strongest supporters of this proposal reached across both sides. In polling and focus group data released to members, we knew that less than 20% of all voters and around 30% of self-identified Democratic party members liked unpledged, and large numbers distrusted them. Most couldn’t explain what they did or should do. As a result, state chairs and others want a solution that was simple and easy to explain. State chairs, including strong Hillary advocates, moved to support the measure as a clean and easy option.
With that in mind, the proposal moved forward and would end up easily passing, finally an easily accepted voice vote with a loud applause of the members.
We are all friends.
There will certainly be those who seek to divide us going forward. To act as though discussion and tough votes at a DNC meeting divide us. I want to answer that — in the end, our goal is unified and together. Our goal is to elect more Democrats. Period.
Bill Owens, one of the leaders of the opposition, and I had repeated talks throughout the week. We disagreed, but when we talked we didn’t talk angrily to each other, we talked about how to benefit his home state. As Don Fowler offered his call for acclamation and Unity, I was among the first to rise to applaud him for his service and his efforts, and the first to shake his hand and thank him for his following through on his beliefs.
Do not get it twisted — our party is a family. In a private DNC meeting, I spoke from my heart about my opposition to caucus and my advocacy for change. While Donna Brazile was on the other side on some issues, she was also one of the first to thank me for my words:
Forget the noise. We treated each other with respect, with civility. There were more hugs and good tears than angry words. In every meeting.
We didn’t talk as enemies blaming each other, we talked as friends who need each other to move forward.
Do not buy that media narrative. Talk, and dissent is good. Because we are adults. We are friends. And, it is up to us to work to make each other better.
That’s the way it truly should be in the room where things happen.