Dear Chair Herman, Chair Roosevelt and Members of the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee:
The Honorable Alexis M. Herman and James Roosevelt,
Cheap Christian Louboutin, Jr.
Co-Chairs of Rules and Bylaws Committee
Members,
coach purses, Rules and Bylaws Committee
Democratic National Committee
430 South Capitol Street, SE
Washington, DC 20003
The Michigan challenge seeks relief that would disregard the Party’s rules, the election results, and basic principles of fairness. While we strongly coincide that Michigan’s delegation should be seated with full votes, the delegate delivery that the Michigan challenge proposes has no basis in decree or rule. Hillary Clinton won 73 delegates in Michigan. Barack Obama won naught. “Uncommitted” won 55 delegates. The Michigan challenge suggests that Senator Obama should receive all of the “Uncommitted” delegates and four of the delegates that Hillary Clinton acquired. In efficacy, the challenger requests the RBC to become the “Uncommitted” line to Senator Obama, including the 36 “Uncommitted” delegate positions that have already been fraught. Neither the DNC Rules nor the Michigan Delegate Selection Plan allow arbitrary reallocation of Uncommitted delegates to a candidate or arbitrary reallocation of delegates from one candidate to another.
Similarly, Michigan’s delegate culling plan does not allow for arbitrary reallocation of delegates from uncommitted delegates to a candidate or from one presidential candidate to another. Michigan’s plan in fact contemplates that there could be a position in which “Uncommitted” would meet threshold and the Michigan delegate culling plan specifically provides: “Each presidential candidate (including uncommitted status) shall use his or her best efforts” to comply with the Party’s goals.
We thank the RBC because its time and attention to these challenges and for attention of the outlooks expressed in this letter.
There would also be a solemn managerial and fairness burden to decide which delegates could no attend the convention. If the delegations have to be pared, it is better to dilute each delegate’s ballot, than to shrink the number of enthusiastic Democrats already elected to the delegation.
As the DNC Staff has noted, the Rules “appear to confer broad legislature on the [RBC] to resolve accurate how to implement the 50% rebate in pledged delegates imposed at Rule 20(C)(1)(a).” Under Rule 20(C)(8), the RBC tin use any “appropriate method” believed most fitting to reduce the inspire of the assignment – it can even grant every State to determine how to implement the DNC’s determination.
The Rules and Bylaws Committee (the “RBC”) has received challenges to seat delegates from Florida and Michigan. Pursuant to RBC Regulation 3.2(C)(ii), we interrupted to ask that all of Florida’s and Michigan’s delegates be seated with full votes. The Florida challenge asks to seat all delegates with full votes alternatively, in the option, to prize only one-half votes to each pledged delegate. While the Michigan challenge properly asks to seat all of the state’s delegates with full votes, it proposes to arbitrarily shift all Uncommitted delegates to Senator Obama even although he received naught votes, and to arbitrarily take away four delegates from Senator Clinton. We offer these points to the RBC for its reiterate and consideration as it prepares to meet on Saturday.
As the Florida Democratic Party advised the RBC in its Memorandum of May 28, 2008, more than 6,000 voters participated in the District Level caucus referenda on March 1, and the Party achieved a different pond of qualified delegate applicants at all levels of the process. Those who were elected delegate or switch spent their time, effort and money to sprint as delegate nominees and they deserve to be seated at the citizen convention. The suggestion that there could be a new process to select a reduced number of delegates would be costly, prejudiced to those already elected and could not lightly be realized in both state in a reasonable time of time given the June 21 deadline for completing the delegate process.
All Florida and Michigan delegates ought be seated. However, if the RBC elects to class a 50% sanction under Rule 20(C)(1), it is extra appropriate to allow all of the 185 pledged delegate from Florida and 128 pledged delegates from Michigan to characterize the voters from their respective states at the convention,
MBT Shoes Clearance, merely to give each of them merely a ½ vote. There would be greater representation and diversity in attendance at the citizen convention. Fewer voters, delegates, and Party leaders would feel demoralized and forsook by our Party. After always, the slate of delegates has been elected already, so any pared down delegates would undoubtedly feel rejected and deprived of their statutory and constitutional right to represent their state as duly elected delegates. A halving reach avoids the serious credentials problems that would arise if half of the delegates from Florida and Michigan did not attend the convention. If the number of delegates is reduced, the resultant alteration in makeup would promising average that both states would be in peril of not complying with their relative Affirmative Action maneuvers and Inclusion Programs.
The RBC can and should seat all of the delegates from Florida and Michigan with full votes. In a recent analysis, the DNC Staff inspected correctly that the penalty imposed on Florida and Michigan exceeded the guideline established in Rule 20(C)(1), which would reduce the voting power of pledged delegates by no more than 50% and unpledged delegates by 100% if a state holds its primary too early. But the Staff then concluded that the Committee “does not have the authority to reverse . . . these automatic sanctions” for shortcoming to comply with the timetable set out in Rule 11. This conclusion is faulty.
/s/
The RBC has jurisdiction over challenges pertaining to the obedience, non-implementation and violation of state Delegate Selection and Affirmative Action Plans. Thus, the RBC has jurisdiction to determine these challenges, and it should do so. Millions of voters in Florida and Michigan have waited patiently for more than four months to understand whether their votes will count and whether they ambition activity a significant role in determining who ambition be the Democratic nominee. It is time to decide this pivotal matter.
IV. The Florida and Michigan Challenges Should Be Resolved Promptly by the RBC Rather than Waiting for the Credentials Committee to Act
Respectfully submitted,
May 30, 2008
Under the Rules, the RBC apparently has chronic jurisdiction over this material and has broad authority to fashion any proper remedy Rule 19(D)(1), Rule 19(E), Rule 20(C)(5). Any of these provisions would suffice to restore Florida and Michigan’s full slate of delegates for elected.
The RBC has broad powers to entirely reinstate the Florida and Michigan delegations. Rule 20(C)(7) allows the RBC to excuse violations while a state celebration and other pertinent Democratic party governors and elected officials have taken provable, positive treads and acted in nice faith to bring the state into obedience with the DNC’s Delegate Selection Rules. With the support of Senator Clinton, both states made agreeable faith offers and took provable,
coach bags, positive steps to bring their systems into compliance with the DNC Rules by trying to organize re-votes. In fact, the RBC Co-Chairs specifically acknowledged that the proposed Michigan legislation for a re-vote “would fit within the framework of the Rules.” (Letter from the Co-Chairs of the RBC, March 19, 2008). Although the states’ efforts to establish new processes that would comply with the Rules failed, beneath Rule 20(C)(7) the states’ tries do cater a ample foundation for the RBC to exercise discretion and to reinstate the whole states’ delegations with full votes.
Under DNC Rules, a vote for “Uncommitted” is accorded the same handling as a labeled presidential candidate. Regulation 4.25 expressly provides, “‘uncommitted’ is remedied as any other presidential candidate status for the purpose of allocating delegates and alternates.” Other provisions also emphatically and repeatedly support the same conclusion (such as Rules 6(I); 10(C); 12(A); 12(B); 12(E); 12(G); 13(C); 13(D); 13(E); 14(C); 14(H) 18(D)(3); 18(F); and 20(C)(2)).
Lyn Utrecht
General Counsel
Hillary Clinton for President
As the DNC Staff acknowledges on sheet 5 of its Staff Analysis of Michigan Challenge, “there is no characteristic authority whatsoever in the Delegate Selection Rules or the Call for the RBC to award delegate situations won by the “Uncommitted” preference to a particular candidate or candidates. To the contrary, the Charter, Article Two, Section 4(g), provides that ‘delegates or alternates expressing an uncommitted preference shall be permitted to be elected at the area level, if such preference meets the appropriate threshold and qualifies for at massive or similar delegates or alternates, such at massive or similar delegates or alternates shall be allocated to that uncommitted preference as if it were a presidential candidate.’”
III. If The Florida and Michigan Delegations’ Strength Is Reduced By 50% – Which We Oppose – It Would Be Less Harmful to the Party and to the Voters and Delegates Who Participated in the Process in Good Faith to Dilute Each Delegate’s Vote Than to Refuse to Seat 50% of the People in Each Delegation
Re: Florida and Michigan
Thus, delegates dispensed based on the predilection voters expressed when they actors their ballots for “Uncommitted” in the Michigan basic cannot arbitrarily be reallocated to Barack Obama for it would violate the just reflection requirement under DNC Rule 13, the prohibition with esteem to such reallocation as set along in Rule 20(C)(2) and because the intent of the more than 238,000 individuals who voted for Uncommitted cannot now be resolute. The voters may have been really uncommitted or they may have supported Joe Biden, John Edwards, or Bill Richardson. The RBC has not authority or factual basis upon which to supplant the decree of these voters.
I. The RBC has the Authority to Seat All of the Delegates from Florida and Michigan with Full Votes
This letter is submitted by the undersigned Counsel on behalf of Senator Hillary Clinton and Hillary Clinton for President. Thank you for your consideration of efforts to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations. More than two million voters in Florida and Michigan cast ballots during the Democratic Party’s presidential primaries, but our Party’s new pose is to prohibit those states from bringing any delegates to the Democratic National Convention. That is an unacceptable result. It denies millions of voters who took every feasible step to have a say in the election from doing so. It also jeopardizes our ability to reclaim the White House and distend our majority in Congress this November. Democrats in Florida and Michigan must be fully represented in the designation process, and our leaders in those states must be encouraged to work hard to promote our Party’s interests. One guiding principle solo should govern resolution of these challenges: the preferences expressed by the voters must be credited.
II. Actual Election Results Must Control the Allocation of Michigan’s Delegates
Moreover, Rule 20(C)(2) plainly provides that “in the event a state party… allocates its pledged delegates or alternates to a presidential preference (including uncommitted status) other than as provided under Rule 13 of these rules,” the delegation shall be sanctioned. Rule 13 requires that delegates “be allocated in a fashion that fairly reflects the expressed presidential preference or uncommitted status of the basic voters.” This Rule further provides that delegates shall be allocated to each presidential preference in proportion to the ratio of the basic vote won by each presidential preference.
Hillary’s lawyers today contoured her wish list to the RBC in one open letter to council members attached later the jump. She afresh takes a hard line the she ambitions all delegates seated with 100% of the votes and allocated the direction the states voted in January, even as the Clinton camp braced for defections amongst her 13 supporters on the committee. Though, one reporter on a phone with Clinton campaign officials this afternoon asked: if Clinton doesn’t obtain everything on her catalogue, isn’t that an plea for her to fight all the way to the convention on behalf of the disenfranchised Florida and Michigan voters? Certainly, Obama wishes not.
cc : Joseph E. Sandler, General Counsel, Democratic National Party
It is a bedrock rule of our Party that each vote must be counted, and thereby every elected delegate should be seated. The States have already been punished because no campaign activity was behaved in Florida or Michigan. There is no requirement or absence to punish their duly elected delegates who represent the 2.3 million voters in Michigan and Florida who participated in the nominating process.
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