DUer
thevoiceofreason worked the math skills and pressured the Mississippi Dems to make sure Obama got his due Mississippi delegate.
This story is about a new result in Washington DC that came about by Obama supporters diligently studying the rules, working the math, and exerting the necessary pressure, and it's one more delegate for our side and one less for their side.
-snip
The Democratic establishment, in the person of our State Chairperson, Anita Bonds, and other wise elders, had been told by "experts" that because Sen. Clinton broke the 15% threshold in the primary voting she was entitled to one of the two PLEO slots (Party Leaders and Elected Officials). The plan even had a "pecking" order which gave priority to our City Council Chairman, offices within the Council, other elected, etc. Council Chair Pro Tempore and baseball stadium booster Jack Evans (also a partner in powerhouse law firm, Patton, Boggs & blah, blah), a Clinton Supporter, was ready to start packing his bags for Denver. Ms. Bonds sincerely believed the experts she had consulted and she was just doing her job, sort of. She stated publicly, in many forums, that the allocation would be 1-1.
It just did not seem right. A 51+% victory ought to count for more than a tie. It was not right. Thanks to the research of 3 local Obama grassroots types who pass our evenings reading footnotes, blogger KCinDC, Jordan Usdan of Young Lawyers for Obama & myself, we discovered that under our local delegate selection plan (although it was not very clearly stated) there is a effective 25% threshold in delegate selection allocations where only 2 delegates are at stake. Short version: DC gets 2 PLEOs, Obama got 76% of the vote in DC, and Clinton got 24%. Therefore Obama should get 76% of 2, or 1.52 delegates, while Clinton should get 24% of 2, or 0.48. That rounds to 2 Obama and 0 Clinton, not 1 and 1, as the powers that be were initially trying to allocate them.
The 15% threshold still applies in the selection of DC's 10 regular delegates. In addition, even though there is a pecking order for the PLEO delegate slots, they must be allocated first by presidential preference. In short, we read the plan & checked the math. We were right, the local Democratic party was wrong. But everyone, Obama supporters, Clinton supporters, the media, was assuming that the party officials were correct and nobody like to do math.
Now came the hard part. Virtually everyone, Obama supporters, Clinton supporters, the media, was assuming that the party officials were correct. We called. We e-mailed. At first we received slightly patronizing but polite responses from the party leaders. Sorry, this is settled, thanks for your interest, go away. We called & e-mailed some more. We tried a few contacts in the local media they thought it was too inside baseball. Even the campaign folks were hard to reach, the delegate counters are very busy folks. Some of our supporters who also happened to be local politicians were hesitant to upset the soon-to-be annointed Clinton delegate who was also the most senior City Councilman. We made it clear that we would challenge the results of a 1-1 allocation.
Finally, the weekend before official delegate selection on April 3, a few people got interested. There were a lots of phone calls back & forth & lots of e-mail. The Obama campaign got interested and liked our math skills. A few people took us seriously. Suddenly the local Dem Chair was concerned. Some people thought we had a personal grudge against Councilman Evans (not so). Meetings were held. Voices were raised. Our math & our intrepretation of the rules held up and with little fanfare the DCDSC selected 2 PLEO delegates pledged to Obama on April 3, not 1-1.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/4/5/112643/6837/528/490677:toast:
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
