Final Update: DNC Convention Rules
More open than expected.
Previously on De Civitate’s coverage of DNC Convention rules:
How to Stop an Exploding President (15 July 2024)
LIVEBLOG: The DNC Rules Committee Meeting (18 July 2024)
The Immunity Ruling (yesterdayish, whatever day that was)
And now the conclusion!
I watched the entire 2.5-hour 2024 Democratic Convention Rules Committee meeting today1 so you didn’t have to!
And… I was impressed, to be honest!
Yes, the Democrats continued to insist on their silly virtual roll call vote and said all kinds of mean things about Ohio that Ohio didn’t really deserve.
Yes, as I wrote yesterday in The Immunity Ruling, they’re rushing to make Kamala “official” and that is a tactical mistake (because it closes off options too early).
Yes, the delegates were a disorganized mess, and a Zoom call is no way to conduct complex parliamentary business (although I was glad we got to see it on a stream).
Nevertheless, the Democratic leadership did precisely the thing I expected them not to do: they opened the convention.
There will be a virtual roll call vote on August 7, weeks earlier than necessary… but leadership made sure that there is a legitimate, open process leading up to that. This process will actually be way clearer and more open to honest competition than several previous DNCs! This is particularly appreciated, because totally unnecessary: Kamala Harris has the support of both leadership and a crushing majority of the delegates. They could have railroaded her through just like Biden and suffered nothing for it. Yet they are including a process. It looks like this:
Today (Thursday) through Saturday, any Democrat can declare his or her candidacy for president. (They’ll have to file a form.)
Sunday through (I believe) Wednesday, all declared candidates will be trying to delegates to sign virtual nominating petitions. Candidates need 300 delegate signatures to get their names on the ballot.
Starting (I believe) next Thursday, August 1, the delegates will vote on the candidates. The timing of this round of voting has been left to the discretion of the chair. If Harris is the only candidate, the voting can last until August 7. If there are multiple candidates, then there could be multiple rounds of voting, and the Chair will adjust each round accordingly.
From the discussion, there seems to be a maximum of three rounds of voting.
The first round includes all candidates. Superdelegates will not be allowed to vote if it’s contested.
The second round seems to still include all candidates, but now superdelegates can vote.
The third round is a runoff between the top two candidates, winner take all.
This is a departure from classical convention practice, which deliberately avoided runoffs like this because it squeezed out centrist compromise candidates. The Klanbake would have never ended under this rule!
Also, from the discussion, there appeared to be no provision made in this rule for what happens if there is still no majority in the third round (because of votes for “Present”). That would almost certainly never happen, but whoa what if it did.
Perhaps I am a cynic, but the openness of this process had me suspicious and looking for loopholes that might give the DNC more power. Unfortunately, the DNC made the draft rules available to delegates… but not to those of us in the viewing audience. I have no way to look for loopholes. Maybe they just… were facing pressure from their delegates and, in the spirit of unity, gave them a token open process? That just seems weird, because I’ve never known the DNC or RNC to act like that.
Yet, for whatever reason, they did act like that, and I am genuinely chuffed about it. In theory, the delegates have the power to decide this open nomination among themselves, and the rules (if the on-screen descriptions were accurate) seem to make it practically possible for them to do so.
Oh, and the other departure from ordinary convention procedure is actually a matter of minor historical significance! To the best of my knowledge, the Vice President has always been chosen by the delegates. Originally, they picked the VP with no real input from the presidential candidate at all. At a certain point, however, it became customary for the presidential candidate to choose his running mate, and then the delegates would ratify his choice at the convention.
This year, however, for (I believe) the first time in American history, a presidential nominee will pick the vice presidential candidate directly. As soon as the presidential nominee is identified, she will tell DNC Chairman Harrison who her VP pick is, and Harrison will certify it, making that person the legal VP candidate for the Democratic Party. The delegates will later hold a VP roll call vote at the convention, but this will be purely ceremonial and totally lacking legal force.
I don’t like that so much.
These rules passed overwhelmingly (154-3, I think?), with much of the discussion time wasted on delegates gushing about various things instead of conducting business. Rawr. Little pet peeve of mine. No minority report issued, so the convention will have literally nothing to vote on when it convenes.
Then they got caught up in a rules dispute about whether a resolution offered could be amended to be considered as a recommendation for an amendment to the DNC charter. (Answer: no.) Finally, they appointed convention officers, and the results were as expected: Chairwoman Minyon Moore, Secretary Rae.
The DNC Convention Rules Committee then adjourned sine die. Playing no possible role during the Chicago convention, there will not reconvene, and have, for all practical purposes, dissolved.
P.S. Oh! While I was finishing this up, I stumbled on a press release where the Democrats did publish the rules! And a timeline, too! Something for me to read over tonight!
But I don’t expect to post about it. I probably won’t even correct this post if it turns out I erred on some minor detail about the rounds of voting. This series started to discuss the possibility of pushing Biden out at a contested convention. Now Biden is out and Harris has seemingly locked up the convention, so there’s no longer a story of Conventional Chaos here. I only finished this update because, well, I got some of you interested in the DNC Rules Drama, and I had to finish telling that story.
Next time something interesting and politically meaningful happens at a national political convention, though, we’ll be back with new installments of Conventional Chaos!
De Civ Next Voyage: Feels like I’m due for a Worthy Reads or a Short Review, though I have several other drafts filling up my drafts box.
Well, kept it on in the background at work, anyway.
It was 2.5 hours?!? You made a Friday’s meeting seem like it was 30 minutes long… wild that it took so long the second time
It appears you erred about a pretty major detail of the voting; from that press release: "The system will allow for as many additional rounds of voting as are necessary to declare a winner, which requires a majority of delegates’ votes."
There's no top-two runoff, no questions of "what if people vote Present on the third ballot"; the balloting will proceed as it would at an old contested convention (or, these days, vote for Speaker of the House) with votes being taken and counted until one candidate has an absolute majority.
(I was about to pull up Germany's system for the election of the federal Chancellor and the state Minister-Presidents, which maybe would have been relevant if it were going to be a strict three-round system, but it appears it's not.)