clair017

Following a brief (by rules meetings standards) conference call on Tuesday, July 17, Unity Reform Commission Chair Jennifer O'Malley-Dillon and Vice Chair Larry Cohen released the following statement ( via the DNC ): “We are proud to fully support the Rules and Bylaws Committee’s proposals for substantially adopting the Unity Reform Commission’s recommendations. Following the 2016 Democratic National Convention, the URC was established by party members with a mandate to review our party’s presidential nominating process and make meaningful reforms to strengthen our party and expand its reach. After several meetings, we proposed our recommendations for making our party more accessible, transparent, and inclusive. Since delivering our recommendations to the DNC last December, DNC Chair Tom Perez and the members of the Rules and Bylaws Committee have worked diligently to develop the new processes through which we will select our presidential nominees in future election cycles.   “Th...

Last week the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee (RBC) once again reconvened in Washington, DC to finalize its proposed package of recommended changes to the delegate selection rules, call for the convention, and bylaws for the 2020 cycle. Despite some of the headlines trumpeting what a momentous occasion it was, the meeting was, in reality, another incremental step in the process of finalizing the amendment proposals. It was a meeting intended to polish one final time the changes the panel would send to the full DNC for consideration in August. Now, that is not to minimize the work of the RBC over the last six months. Indeed, from a macro perspective the changes the members of the Democratic National Committee will vote on at its Chicago meeting next month represent some fairly significant potential changes to the Democratic presidential nomination process. But the RBC arrived at those decisions in fits and starts over a series of meetings during the first half of 2018. In other words, t...

Betsy Z. Russell writing for 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.” And it is exactly that "pretty unwieldy" part that has been a common bond among those states that have either moved to primaries or have signaled that such a move was on the way for the 2020 cycle. Colorado , Maine , and Minnesota all made the change in 2016, the legislature in Utah added funding for a presidential primary to the budget, and Democrats in Nebraska and Was...