A Cause To Convention For

So, today was the Democratic County Convention. If you'll recall from an earlier post, I was elected as a delegate for Senator Obama from my precinct to the County Convention, so this morning I woke up, looked up the directions to the Middle School it was being held at online, and left early, so as not to be late.

It's a good thing I left a little early, because I discovered that the directions I had found online from the MapQuest people were completely wrong (is it possible MapQuest is run by Republicans? Who can say for sure). Luckily I found it some thirty minutes after I should have, but having left early, I arrived on time.

Confusion reigned upon entering the building, luckily someone who had already been around had come out to her car to get something, so myself and a lady who arrived at the same time were able to follow her to the gym (on the opposite side of the school) where the convention was being held.

Side Bar - While I was driving around trying to find the Middle School I found the place where the Republican County Convention was being held. Do you know how I know? They had signs. We're the party of the New Deal, you'd think we could figure out to have signs.

Anyway, finally, I was signed in as an Obama Delegate for the 9th Precinct and I made my way to the table for my precinct where I was greated by the other delegates who I had befriended way back on March 4th (which seems so long ago now).

The Convention got under way and we learned that each precinct or group of precincts (some of the smaller ones had been combined) would get to choose 1 delegate and 1 alternate delegate.

If you recall from that earlier post, our precinct had sent 5 Delegates for Obama (myself being one of them) and 9 Delegates for Clinton. This didn't look good for my being chosen a Delegate to the State Convention.

Three of us wanted to be the Delegate (myself included) and we all had one vote. One person got only one vote (having voted for herself) and that left 13 total votes between two people. I lost by one vote. I feel pretty good about this, however, considering that there were only 5 Obama delegates. Instead I was chosen as an Aternate for the State Convention.

However, I was disturbed by the way this was handled, considering that I knew about 65% of the county had voted for Clinton, I assumed that most precincts would be split that way as well, meaning that every precinct might elect a Clinton delegate. This wouldn't be a true representation of how the county had voted. I was very uneasy about this as were others in my precinct. After each of the precinct Delegates were named it turned out that of the twelve Delegates, only two were for Obama. This is nowhere close to the correct percentage that our county should have been sending.

(This is what prompted my Facebook message about being an alternate but having a problem with the process.)

Someone at our table had a booklet of the County and State Convention rules, however, and let me borrow them to try and ease my ill feeling, by at least knowing that we had done it right even if it seemed unfair based on how Democratic Delegates were normally parcelled out.

As I read through the pages and pages of non relevent material, the Nomination Committee was meeting to elect five At Large Delegates. About the same time I heard about this I got to the portion in the rules about the At Large Delegates.

The rules stated (I'm paraphrasing, because I had borrowed the rules, I don't actually have them in front of me at the moment) that the purpose of the Nominating Commitee was to alocate the At Large Delegates in order to reflect send a correct number of each delegates to the State Convention based on the percentage of votes taken when we signed in.

That meant that they would use the five at large delegates to rectify the inproportionate number of Delegates that Clinton was currently recieving.

I felt relieved. This made sense to me.

I wasn't relieved for long as the Nominating Commitee came back with their five At Large Delegates. The percentage for Clinton had actually grown larger.

People throughout the crowd were getting angry. I stepped up to the table at the front where the Convention Chair and other Convention officials were seated. One person was trying to quiet down the audience the others looked at me as I took a seat next to the table. I voiced my concerns and told them what I had read in the rules and how I thought that meant they were supposed to use the five At Large spots to get the percentage close to the percentage with which we had voted. I was told that they had done that. I asked to see the numbers, because I didn't believe that the people there had voted at such a percentage to get Clinton 14 Delegates to only 3 for Obama. They told me no. They said it was done and they were about to take a vote to accept the At Large Delegates as they had nominated them.

Other people had crowded towards the table and were hearing what I had to say, and I was starting to win some converts. A couple of the Convention officers asked me to come with them outside so we could talk about it without all of the noise and people crowding up on us. I went with them and calmly made my case. I said I wanted to see the percentages and if they matched up I would stop my complaint. One of them admitted to me that the Nomination Commitee hadn't actually looked at the percentages of votes from the Delegates.

I calmly re-read the pertinant portion of the rules explaining what the At Large Delegates were intended to do. All the while I wanted to be yelling at them for screwing this up so badly. We wouldn't have been in this position if they had just followed the rules in the first place. I felt that my point would be better made if I kept my cool, however, and I am proud to say that I did so.

The Convention Officers agreed that the numbers needed to be looked at.

We went back into the gym where I was horified to discover that in my absence they had called the matter to vote and apparently skipped over any discussion about it. I tried to speak my point, but the man with the microphone kept saying "We've called it to vote, we can only accept the motion or deny the motion."

Now keep in mind that well over 60 percent of the people there were for Hillary Clinton and by accepting the Nominations as entered they would have won her more Delegates.

I and others kept voicing our displeasure with this move, but the man at the microphone would not be swayed. He called to vote. Finally I had to hope that right would win out.

It did, by two votes the motion was denied. Someone called a motion to discuss the issue that we had, and finally, I was handed the microphone.

At this point, my hand's were shaking and I was very, very pissed, but I managed to keep my cool. I explained my position, re-read the rules to everyone there and simply asked that we get a percentage and then let the Nomination Commitee refigure the five At Large Delegates.

I got a large ovation.

Someone went and got the numbers and told us that of the 215 Delegates at the County Convention, 67 of them had pledged for Obama and 148 had pledged for Clinton. That meant that Obama should get roughly 31% of the Delegates and Clinton should get 69%.

As it was, Clinton was getting 82% and Obama was getting 18%. Now did people understand why I had a problem?

The Nomination Commitee agreed to remeet and the numbers were fixed with Obama getting 3 of the 5 at large Delegates meaning that he was recieving 29% of the Delegates (as close as we could get to 31% as giving him 4 of the 5 would have meant him getting 35% which would have been unfair to Clinton.)

There were some people there who were very upset that I made such a big deal about the whole thing, but for the most part people were very supportive, Clinton supporters as well as Obama supporters, people who thanked me for standing up for what was right despite all the anger it caused originally (as well as the anger some people no doubt still feel towards me, one woman in a Hillary shirt got my name so that she could let others no what I had done. She said this as if that were a bad thing, I told her that I hoped others could learn what I had done as I was rather proud of it. Well, I had been a good sport through most of this, I felt like I deserved that moment.)

What upsets me is the Nomination Commitee and their attempt to pass off their first list of At Large Delegates. I will choose to believe that they did so in ignorance, being unaware of the rules, and not in order to win more Delegates for their Candidate (only one member of the Nomination Commitee supported Barack Obama).

Either way though, I am very disappointed in their actions and glad that I had the guts to stand up for the rules.

The whole situation gave me a massive Migraine and I'm still a little shaken up by it all, but I figured I might feel better if I told the story, so here it is. I hope that other county conventions went smoother.