“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.
“These new reforms will increase participation, empower our candidates to be more competitive across the country, bring new and unaffiliated voters into the party, broaden our base at the grassroots level, expand the use of primaries, and make caucuses more accessible to people like shift workers and overseas military personnel. Notably, in a reform that we fully support, the new rules will reduce the influence, whether real or perceived, of unpledged delegates.
“These proposed reforms carry support from this commission made up of individuals that represent the vibrant, diverse quilt that makes up the Democratic Party. As such, we are confident that we’re going to head into 2018 and 2020 a stronger, more unified, competitive, and energized party that is welcome to every voter who shares our values.”[Bolded links added by FHQ]
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FHQ will not call the aforementioned conference call a formality, but the pace with which the URC reviewed the work of the Rules and Bylaws Committee -- reconciling it with the URC recommendations from December -- made it appear as if it was just that.
And it was not just the pace. There were few times during the conference call in which objections were made. URC member, Jim Zogby, raised some concerns about a couple of subsections to the party reform section of the URC report. And vice chair, Larry Cohen, made a passing reference to the fact that the Rules and Bylaws Committee scaled back the language on how forcefully the national party would push states/state parties to change registration rules, for example. But that was the extent of the dissension. Zogby's issues will see a review by the Rules and Bylaws Committee either at its pre-DNC meeting gathering or during the winter meeting in early 2019. On the other hand, Cohen's point was more a comment on preference, but one that implied how limited the national parties are in exercising enforcement when change requires movement by state governments; state governments in some cases of which are controlled by the Republican Party.
With little dissension, then, the URC signed off on the rules reform package the Rules and Bylaws Committee has devised, clearing its path for consideration before the full DNC in August. That there has now been near unanimity on these changes at the URC stage in 2017, the RBC stage in 2018, and the URC review stage sends a clear signal to the members of the DNC ahead of the party's vote next month to adopt the changes to the delegate selection rules and convention call for 2020.
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Real time thread on URC conference call meeting:
2020 Delegate Selection Rules and Convention Call Pass Democratic Rules and Bylaws Committee Hurdlehttps://t.co/N4CwF8kgIY— Josh Putnam (@FHQ) July 17, 2018
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Related:
2020 Delegate Selection Rules and Convention Call Pass Democratic Rules and Bylaws Committee Hurdle
Third Way? Third Way Plus? The Democrats' Rules and Bylaws Committee Again Revisits Superdelegates
DNC Unity Reform Commission Report
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