Delegate Voodoo: Credentials, Dates and Magic Math
Recently Howard Dean expressed confidence that the Democratic nominee would be known by July 1st. There is a significance to that date that has gone unreported. July 1st matters because if credentials challenges are not resolved by then, they will be resolved by the Credentials Committee, where Hilary Clinton has a small edge at this time.
Yesterday the DNC sent a strange signal, which has nearly everyone scratching their heads:
The Democratic National Committee said Tuesday that Florida and Michigan members will be seated on the three standing committees — including the critical Credentials Committee—at the party’s 2008 national convention, a position that could affect the selection of the Democratic nominee.
While both states were stripped of their delegates to the convention, according to the DNC’s interpretation of party rules, members from those states will be seated on the Credentials Committee. The Credentials Committee, which can meet prior to convention, resolves disputes over whether to seat delegates at the convention.
Hillary Clinton had some success last weekend in Texas with credentials challenges. Some of the county conventions took over 20 hours to complete because Clinton surrogates were on the ground challenging the right of individuals who had been elected at local caucuses to be there. The purpose of the credentials committee at the convention is to resolve any challenges to the right of delegates to be seated at the convention.
I. The Rules
Credentials challenges are nearly as arcane and mystical as the delegate selection process itself. I downloaded the 52-page PDF of the Final 2008 Call to Convention (PDF) to see what the actual rules are, as opposed to the simplistic explanations I’ve seen around the web. Information about the standing credentials committee starts at page 38.
On May 17, the Florida Democratic Party will complete the selection of their delegates. Michigan will also complete delegate selection on May 17th. Also on May 17th, both states will submit the names of their delegates to the credentials committee (along with delegates for the other two standing committees).
Any challenge will move through a series of steps and can die at any point in the process. For example, the chair of the credentials committee has the right to rule on a challenge peremptorily where a decision is plain from the challenge and the answer (Section 6.B., page 28). The State Party can take steps to remedy the situation, which in this case would have been a revote or caucus after 2/5/08. If it is not resolved in those processes, the challenge goes to a public hearing by the committee members.
Appendix A of the rules says that any challenge not resolved by June 30th will be heard by the Credentials Committee.
Even though Howard Dean has said the FL/MI committee members will be recognized in the standing committees, they will not participate in decisions pertaining to the seating of their states’ delegates.
Voting: A member of the Credentials Committee elected by a state delegation shall not vote on a challenge arising in that state. All matters shall be determined by a majority vote of those present and voting, a quorum of the full Committee being present. A quorum shall consist of members present in person representing a majority of the total number of committee votes entitled to be counted in the matter.
II. Counting Committee Delegates = Voodoo
The Credentials Committee consists of 186 members. 25 are Democratic Party officials, appointed by the DNC. 161 are appointed by state parties according to this chart (PDF). The 161 members are allocated to candidates in proportion to the vote received in that state. This makes for some really complicated math, particularly when many states have one representative per committee.
The bottom line as I see it is that neither candidate will have enough standing committee members to have a majority without having those 25 ‘super-committee’ members step in to make the final decision. But in the meantime, Clinton has enough allocated to her to force a “minority report” now, because of her wins in California and New York, which have a large number of allocated delegates.
What significance does a ‘minority report’ have? I have no clue and haven’t been able to figure it out from the rules I have. What I *think* it means is that she can continue to press it as an issue and foreclose the nominating process until it’s resolved one way or the other on the convention — it’s a stall, or a brokering strategy.
Now you know what I know about the voodoo. This stuff makes the Internal Revenue Code look simple. The bottom line to all of this is that Clinton, or Obama for that matter, could use these challenges as a power play and lever in the unending backroom dealmaking that is American politics. This is also why some Democrats have expressed concern about the protracted battle for the nomination and bringing the rogue delegations back into play.
III. Theoretically speaking…
If Barack Obama were to agree to seat the Florida delegates according to the results of their election, or if some agreement were struck to count half the Florida delegates in proportion to the election results, he would still have more delegates. He could do the same with the Michigan delegates (though I still don’t see how results from a court-declared unconstitutional primary can be recognized) and he’d still be ahead. Clinton would be able to claim a gain in the popular vote. To me, that point should receive the least weight, given that Obama did not campaign in those states and did not even have his name on the ballot in Michigan.
As I see it, if they leave this question unresolved until the primaries have ended and then the Obama campaign proposes the seating of both delegations with some modifications such as those suggested above, it seems to me that he could foreclose any back room deals or protracted and painful battles in arcane committee hearings or the convention floor.
IV. What is this really about?
There are some interesting dynamics in play here. There is the deep and bitter power struggle between the old guard Democrats and the new generation Democrats. The old guard are represented by old, nearly Republican organizations like the DLC (where Clinton is the Vice-President). The old guard operates in secrecy and back rooms. The new generation is represented by the spreading grass-roots movements across the country, and non-profit advocacy groups like VoteVets.org and Moveon.org. Campaign funding is another example of the old vs. new. Clinton has the big-money donors like those who sent their threat last week to the DNC (which, by the way, was answered by the Obama supporters with a spike in donations to the DNCC). Obama has the individual $25 donors en masse ($30M in Jan, $55M in Feb, $40M in March). Voter registrations are at an all-time high, thanks to the well-organized Obama efforts to register new voters in all 50 states.
The other dynamic at work is the effort on the part of the Republican legislatures to control the outcome of the Democrats’ nominating process. Republican intervention was at the heart of the Florida and Michigan primary date moves. The strategy was simple enough: Bundle legislation or a ballot initiative around a key issue with the primary date move, forcing the Democrats to either support it and hope for the best or oppose it and face criticism from their constituents. Most incumbent Democrats, particularly those in conservative old-guard states like Florida and MIchigan, chose to face the odds that their primaries would initially be discounted, but that a clear contender would emerge that would allow the delegates to be gracefully seated without consequence.
When Obama emerged as a contender, the strategies were forced to shift. Clinton latched onto the “all votes must count” message while simultaneously saying that caucuses shouldn’t carry the weight of a primary. I call that they “all votes must count unless they’re for the opponent” strategy. The Obama campaign has consistently said that the rules should be followed, regardless of the consequence, though recently that position has softened to say that delegates could be seated with a 50/50 split, giving them no say in the nomination, but still a presence on the floor with regard to other issues and busness.
Whatever the final disposition of the Florida and Michigan delegations, a clear message needs to be carefully and repeatedly articulated to voters: When the opposing party interferes in your nominating process, the first priority needs to be putting measures in place to prevent that interference, even at the cost of some votes not being counted.
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