Tag Archives: Rules and By-laws Committee

Virtual Voting and the 2020 Nomination

By tmess2 | Published August 31, 2019

As Doc Jess noted yesterday, the Rules and By-Laws Committee (the party entity with responsibility for reviewing state party delegate selection plans) has found problems with the virtual caucus proposed by Iowa.  The concerns, however, extend beyond Iowa.  According to news reports, the RBC has also made a similar decision concerning Nevada’s delegate selection rules.

As I noted several weeks ago, there are now seven states left that do not use a state-run primary  with Iowa, Nevada, and Wyoming being the last pure caucus states and Alaska, Hawaii, Kansas, and North Dakota using party-run primaries.  In the revised delegate selection rules, Rule 2.G suggested that the RBC would consider plans that allowed internet voting as a form of absentee voting if the proposed plan included sufficient security assurances.  In its recent decision, the RBC apparently decided that — under current conditions — such assurances are not possible.  It is, however, understandable why Iowa and Nevada put forth proposals that relied on internet voting.  Rule 2.K.8 requires that parties using a party-run process create some alternative means of voting for those who are unable to participate in person on the day established for the caucus/party-run primary.

In light of these two provisions in the national rules, it’s not just Iowa that has included the possibility of electronic voting.  The draft plans in Alaska, Iowa, and Nevada include provisions for electronic voting.  The plans in Hawaii and North Dakota  opted to use mail-in voting instead of electronic voting.  (Alaska’s plan also includes absentee voting, so they might just need to eliminate the electronic voting.)  The plan in Kansas notes absentee/advanced voting as a possibility without further details.  If I am reading their plan correctly, Wyoming permits surrogate voting (which looks to be a proxy vote permitted in limited circumstances).  (I am not sure that proxy voting is allowed by the national rules — although it looks like Wyoming has used it previously from the comments submitted on their plan.  However, Wyoming’s plan has other problems that will probably require them to redraft their plans.) Continue Reading...

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2020 Delegate Selection Plans

By tmess2 | Published August 7, 2019

While it has taken some time to get plans from all of the states and territories, it appears that all of the delegate selection plans for 2020 have now been sent to the Rules and By-laws Committee (you may remember them from 2008) for review.  One of the key issues for this current set of plans has been how many caucus states there will be for 2020.

Caucuses have been a catch 22 for both sides of the establishment vs. activist debate.  On the one hand, the caucus system rewards organization which — at least in the past — gave an edge to the establishment.  On the other hand, in recent cycles, caucuses reward the candidates with the most enthusiastic supporters — which has tended to be the candidates supported by grass roots progressive activists.  On the third hand, the advantage for the activists come from a system that puts obstacles in the place of broad participation — so, while that system, benefits progressive activists, the basic structure is contrary to some basic principles that progressives hold.   As a result, the rules changes after the 2016 cycle were definitely designed to promote movement away from caucuses and to encourage those that remained to take steps to increase participation, and those changes have had an effect.

In 2016, thirty-seven states and two territories (D.C. and Puerto Rico) had government-run primaries.  Democrats Abroad had a party-run primary.  Finally, thirteen states and four territories held a variation on a caucus — some more open than others. Continue Reading...

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The 2020 Convention — Rules Changes (June 2018)

By tmess2 | Published June 17, 2018

For both parties, the rules governing the national convention is the product of gradual change over time.  It is a natural desire — shared by both parties — to look back and what went wrong and to try to fix it.  The more intelligent members of both parties understand that every cycle will be somewhat different,; so “fixing” something to stack the deck against a candidate is likely to backfire.  A perfect example is the Republican rule changes after 2012.  In 2012, the Ron Paul campaign was perceived as manipulating the rules to get Ron Paul supporters elected to fill delegate slots won by other candidates.  In response, the rules were changed to bind delegates to vote for the candidate that won the delegates.  Regardless of how one feels about the merits of that change, the result was that the Republican Party establishment (which had pushed for the rule change) was helpless to stop the hostile takeover of the Republican Party by Donald Trump.

After the last convention (following past practice), the Democratic Party appointed a commission (the Unity Reform Commission) to study the rules and suggest changes in certain areas.  In early 2018, The commission’s report then went to the Rules & By-laws Committee (RBC) of the Democratic National Committee.  Among the tasks of the RBC is drafting the actual rules governing the 2020 delegate selection process and the convention process.  Since receiving the report of the commission, the RBC has been considering that report along with looking at other issues related to delegate selection process and has been composing a draft of the rules for 2020.  Later this year, that draft will go to the full Democratic National Committee for a final vote.

While the RBC has discussed a large number of changes, the one change that has gotten some media attention is the rules governing who can run.  Most of the media coverage has, at the very least, ignored the history behind this rule, and suggested that the rules change is targeted at Senator Bernie Sanders. Continue Reading...

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2020 Democratic Convention — Unity and Reform Commission — Part 2

By tmess2 | Published February 12, 2018

One of the issues in the last several primary cycles — for both parties — have been the role of unpledged delegates.  There are several reasons why both parties designate certain party officials (and on the Democratic side, elected officials) as automatic delegates.  First, it removes these individuals from the competition for the “regular” delegate slots making it easier for grassroots activists to compete for a delegate slot.   Second, these individuals have a slightly different perspective than the voters.  While everyone wants the party to win the White House, state party officials are also responsible for winning as many down ballot races as possible.  Elected officials want to win their own races.  As such, in theory, if the leading candidate seems too extreme or flawed, the unpledged delegates could swing the nomination to the second-placed candidate.   Before 2016, the Republicans decided to bind their automatic delegates based on primary results in their state.  After 2016, some Republicans might regret that their automatic delegates no longer had that power given the continuing fiasco that is Donald Trump.  However, in neither party, the automatic delegates have ultimately supported the candidate that won the most delegates; so this theoretical power has never been used.

Even though this power has never been used to change the result, many Democrats have wanted to reduce the power of the automatic delegates.  The resolution that created the Unity and Reform Commission mandated that, while elected officials (Senators, Representatives, Governors) and distinguished party leaders (e.g., former presidents, former DNC chairs, former speakers/caucus leaders) would remain unpledged, DNC members would be pledged in accordance with the primary results.  The task for the Unity and Reform Commission was to make recommendations as to how to handle this process.  First, the recommendations distinguish between DNC members who represent the states (state party chairs and the DNC members elected by the state parties) and other DNC members (at-large members and those who represent groups of elected officials).  The “state” members will be bound based on the state results; and the “national” DNC members will be bound based on the national results.

On the issue of exactly how to bind these automatic delegates, the Commission did not reach a final recommendation but, instead, suggested two alternatives.   The first would just pool the delegate votes with no individual votes on the first ballot.  The second would create a mechanism for assigning the automatic delegates to specific candidates based on the delegates personal wishes with some random mechanism if the personal preferences do not line up with the required allocation.   Unlike regular delegates, however, the automatic delegates would be absolutely bound to these allocations. Continue Reading...

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2020 Democratic Convention — Unity and Reform Commission — Part 1

By tmess2 | Published January 7, 2018

While, in one sense, it is very early to talk about who will be President of the United States on January 21, 2021, there are many people who think that process has a lot to do with results.  And the drafting of the rules for 2020 have already started.

On the Republican side, there is no public effort to re-write the rules.  Unlike the Democratic Party, the Republican party has the basic rules (which are less detailed than the Democratic Party rules) for allocating delegates to the national convention within the actual Rules of the Republican Party and require a supermajority of the Republican National Committee to change those Rules.

The Democrats, however, keep the rules for delegate selection separate from the party by-laws.  So every cycle, the rules and by-laws committee drafts those rules and submits them to the full Democratic National Committee for approval.  The starting point for these rules is the rules from the previous cycle.  However, because no rules are perfect, most contested campaigns lead to complaints about the rules.  These complaints in turn have, in most of these cycles, caused the party to appoint a commission to study whatever rules were seen as being a problem in the last cycle and make recommendations. Continue Reading...

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