The Democratic National committee is wrapping up its today. N washington, d. C. We will show you what happened during the meeting earlier today, which began with an audience member expressing her disappointment with the commission process. I came all the way from california to be here. I may have to leave in the middle of this. Thate that Going Forward the process we are undertaking here, including ourselves as participants, i profess being very disappointed with the outreach regarding this meeting. As one of many people [indiscernible] we finally received an email less than 48 hours before this meeting started to inform us and nobody has ever gotten back to me. Now that these recommendations are going to the rules committee, i would hope that we would improve upon the image that is out there now all over social media being talked about. For all the talk about wanting to reform and make this party or transparent, the exact opposite has happened. Im one of the coauthors of this autopsy report. Put a summary on everyone we are not asking for time here. We are trying to make this available to the Commission Members. We are loyal Democratic Party members. I am an executive board rep for my own state party. I would hope that we could share this in a collegial manner. We have that and we are scanning it and emailing et al. The Commission Members to all of the Commission Members. All the materials we received will be scanned. Theres no reason why they cant be handed out. I appreciate it. We just had a miscommunication. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. Can we have the commission at their seats, please . If you can just hand them to maureen. Hand them out to the Commission Members. Thank you. Can the Commission Members take their seats so we can get started, please . Ok good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Im the chair of the unity reform commission. Im joined by my friend, vice chair larry cohen. I hereby call the i asked the members to stand and join us for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of america. Which ite republic for stands, one nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I am now going to ask patrice taylor, im going to ask helen. Cfadden to call the role the chairs are both your. The chairs are both here. Floorm going to hand the over to vice chair cohen to give us a recap and an overview of what we are doing today. Thanks. Let me say to all 21 of us and those who are here from the public. We set off on this journey inmerly in may formally may. We came here from three different nominees, makes this a struggle. Everybody participates exactly where they came from. It does not take a math genius to figure out the solution. The outcome it is not a solution. Particularly because of where we came from, lots was accomplished yesterday. There were three main areas. Unpledged delegates, primaries, and party reform. Today the fourth area caucuses and some unfinished businesses in those three. It has big items never been about perfection. Large steps if not giant steps in terms of voters first. Voters first in terms of eliminating 400 superdelegates out of 715 on the first ballot for the president president ial nomination of the United States. First has been saying loud and clear that in primaries, this party stands behind sameday registration, automatic Voter Registration, sameday Party Registration, this party stands behind a process in every state in terms of the election of the leadership of the Democratic Party that is transparent and open and clear and as simple as possible so activists can get involved in the party and run and not feel like they have no chance. Here,ose of us who are the sister who spoke earlier, i do not know she is still here, and others, this will be about what we do in the states, not what we do here or what the dnc does. At every level. It is not going to be about 440 seven people, it is going to be about millions of people and how they take up this challenge. That i haveo say worked with this chair appointed by hillary clinton, myself appointed by bernie sanders. In the year we have worked together since the forums that were open to the public, that in that year we found lots of Common Ground and not just based on the numbers on this commission. As i said yesterday, we are governed by that resolution. It had lots of specifics in it. No one was under any illusions when we agreed to put in hundreds of hours, all volunteers just like the activists that are sitting here and watching. No difference. Conclude, i say this to all of us. We may not meet together again as 21. We are 20 today. We should take it as a lesson that we do not have to do what we were told to do. We do not have to look at the Rearview Mirror and figure out that is what we are doing Going Forward, what we did in the past. Can, with that resolution, it is boundaries, start with a blank sheet of paper, what is good for the people, what is good for working families, what is good for this party if the party not only wants to win but stand for something that we can all be proud of. I would say to you, not , but i am not perfect proud to have been your vice chair and two of worked with you. I hope today we can finish in that spirit. [applause] larry. K you, business. Dy to get to we still have worked before us. We are going to start this morning reviewing caucuses. We will then move to amendments that were tabled yesterday. We will then move to the process and next steps and we will then hear from the Commission Members. Lets begin going through the caucuses and the recommendations that are before us. I will give a summary of what we have and then we will open for amendments from the Commission Members. Mandatedssion has been to make recommendations to the caucuses focusing on making them less burdensome and more inclusive, transparent, and accessible. We have, over the course of the last months, heard from a lot of different people about caucuses, everything from the unique perspective of those on the commission who have been part of caucuses or execute them, as wells from state parties and a number of large or small states. Work and ae a lot of lot of thinking and so the recommendations im about to go through come from the work we have done over the last year. The Key Highlights that are currently in the recommendations include the following. Requiring absentee voting. Making sure state parties have the financial and technical ability to run and execute the caucus. Requiring sameday Voter Registration and Party Affiliation. A change at the caucus location. Requiring public reporting of the total statewide vote counts. Ining sure votes are cast writing. Provide for a recount. The allocation of delegates on the initial round of voting. Impact of any Voter Suppression or disenfranchisement imposed by the state. When a state has five or more congressional districts and holds a state run primary, the state party should use this primary to allocate delegates to president ial candidates. The dnc should institute a National TrainingProgram Specific to caucuses. The dnc should work with state parties to create guidelines for dissemination and reporting, as well as supporting some of the new guidelines provided by these caucus recommendations, and then at the end of the day we should ensure that all caucus voters have the right to participate. Those are the highest level. With that i opened up to the commission for amendments on the caucus section. With that i open it up to the commission for amendments on the caucus section. Jeff weaver . I had an amendment that i timely filed that i do not think should be controversial although you never know. With respect to 1d in the text. We are requiring caucuses to provide statewide headcounts. I know many on this commission are familiar with how the iowa caucus and other caucuses work. Even on caucus night they are entered in process. There is an initial count of people in the room and then there is a process which we call realignment in which supporters of nonviable candidates then moved to other candidates who are viable, and in some cases supporters of viable candidates can move around the room. In making sure we do the statewide headcounts, we want to make sure we capture the first expression of Voter Sentiment for the candidates. Process, what is expressed at the end of the night is the number of delegates people one. That understates the support that lesser performing candidates have received. In the iowa caucus, you could receive 14 of the vote in every precinct in your election return would reap would be reported as zero on caucus night. That is unfair when we are looking at 2020 with a crowded field. Be a lot ofing to candidates introducing themselves for the first time to voters in iowa. I think it is important to give given i was first in the nation status that voters know of the votegot 13 in iowa and not 0 . This certainly impacted governor omalleys campaign, where his Election Night report of state delegate equivalents was far below his overall percentage of the vote of the people coming to the caucus. I would replace the language in , which currently says require the public reporting of the total vote counts based on the first round of voting which is a term we use elsewhere with a different meaning, with this language, which says requires the public reporting of the statewide vote count for each candidate based on the first expression of preference by caucus participants. When you do the First Division and people go into their various groups, in iowa what they do is count people and put those numbers onto a match sheet. It is those numbers that would be used for reporting the statewide vote total. I think it is comfortable with the way iowa and other states already do it. It does not require them to do any extra steps, it just ensures that numbers they are collecting in the first instances are the ones that are used for these statewide vote totals. So that voters know, when voters came to the caucus, who they supported when they first got there before the realignment process. In terms of delicate allegation, they can continue doing it the way they currently do it in terms of delegate allegation, they can continue to do it in the way they currently do it. Second. Ive a question as to how that might or might not square with the notion of having a written record of each vote and for the availability of a if there is ae realignment so that the votes to mathematically compute the delegates would not necessarily be the same as the votes that would be cast at the first expression that jeff is talking about. You actually might have an inconsistency between the recount methods and whatever it is you are reporting. You might want to still have the flexibility to report the first , andvotes as completed that would be the record and then that would be available for the recount and you would use that information to confirm the delegate allocations were correct. As much as possible, we would like to leave the actual implementation of the policies to the states themselves. The only principle we are trying to protect is that voters know, in the first instance, who voted for her him and he supporting home when they walked through the door. Whether i will collects writing at that point or collects it later, i think is something that. Left to them. The recount, for purposes of the popular vote, people are not going to have a recount for a popular vote that does not result in a delegate allegation. Allocation. Gate is, in theity instance of a state that is tracking their first vote and then will have a realignment, and that realignment, wherever they and up, that wherever they end up, that next cents that next set of votes would determine delegate allocation. It would make sense to keep track of both counts. By doing it this way and having realignment youre going to be in that situation. Have two setsg to of popular votes plus the delegate count. Youre going to have three sources of information as to what happened. Not even two, but three. I know i was traditionally had one. That is the state delegate equivalent. We would going we would be going not to one not from one totwo, but from one to two three. We are taking out the third one youre talking about. We have been talking about ways to track the Different Levels of the alignment process already, as a result of the ongoing review we have been having in iowa. We are talking about methods and how we can best track those levels of alignment. Anare going to have to have audit process and we want to make sure it is fair to all candidates. Mayor webb . You anticipated half of my questions, i wanted to know what jans position was because she was iowa. She was from iowa. In the past we have a tradition of reporting delegate numbers. We were preparing for the possibility of having to provide the audit numbers. We want to make sure this is fair to all. Is a betterprocess caucus for all of us. Countse prefer to do the , the resultegates of a true caucus, we can deal with whatever the Commission Decides upon. We want make sure this is the best process for the candidates. In the state of nebraska we have caucusgoers write down their preference, so it is already written on a piece of paper that is written and capped so we would be able to abide by this. Other thing i want to make a note of, further down in it doesmmendations, have a number five but it highlights that the dnc will work with state parties to create consistent standards and guidelines across caucuses. The dnc should explore Technology Resources available to exploit state Party Resources and tracking that states can use. This, in my mind captures the fact that we knowledge these recommendations are making changes and making it more complicated. We recommend the National Party is supporting that whether it is from coming up with a system that works for folks in conjunction with the states that have caucuses to helping with the Technology Side of tracking. I wanted to highlight that since i think it is complementary to the point youre bringing up, jeff. Any additional discussion on that . We are going to go to a vote on an amendment for the vote for d which changes round of voting to expression of caucus participants. First is in there, it is not being switched. Favor of the amendment, please raise your hand. We are unanimous. The amendment passes. Thank you. We are going to move to any additional amendments on caucuses. Ivan amendment. Amendment 34. Andhanges page 20, line 12 13. Asks us to currently make recommendations on expanding the use of primaries. This is what my amendment does. In statesge reads with five or more congressional districts that hold a statewide democratic president ial primary there should be presumption that the state delegate selection uses the outcome of the primary to allocate delegates rather than a caucus. My amendment removes the , thereon and begins with shall be a presumption that state delegate selection plans use the outcome of the state run president ial primaries to allocate delegates for their respective president ial candidates rather than a caucus. My amendment does not require states that do not have primaries to hold primaries. It simply says that states that already have both a statesponsored primary and a caucus that they use the state primary to allocate their delegates. Only twohere were states that had both state run primaries and use their caucuses instead to allocate delegates. That was nebraska and Washington State. In nebraska in 2016 only 22,000 people participated in the caucuses despite Campaign Spending hundreds of millions of dollars to turn out votes in the nebraska caucuses. , nohe state run primaries money was spent in organizing participants000 participated. That is almost four times the amount. If we are looking to include more people in the process, we have to use primaries over caucuses. That is my amendment. Happy to hear any questions. To have a second . Second. Im emotional from this and i apologize in advance. I read from the aclu report on nebraska. , in nebraska a tax on Voting Rights happened year after year. Nebraska is a solidly red state. They have Voter Suppression year after year after year. Many of us here, not only me, many can get ahead of me in terms of a lifetime fighting for Voting Rights. Statesmise for these red , one of the reasons why many of us are so passionate about letting the state decide whether they have a caucus or not is the absolute trashing of voter rights that has occurred in every one of those states. That is why we lose these elections. Going to say were strip nebraska of the caucus for some reason i do not even understand, when they have to fight that year after year, i am quite upset and quite passionate about defending the right of the people in nebraska to decide that issue, not this commission. Similar buti have a opposite concern. In Washington State when we heard the presentation, i do not remember the exact figures, but about one third of the total number of voters that voted in , not the same people but the quantity, those hundreds of thousands of voters that voted in the washington primary had no voice. They were not able to run for delegates, their vote went uncounted. Completely uncounted. I think that is problematic, too. You are saying people are disenfranchised. To me this is another way of how they have been disenfranchised. Atyoure looking at number im talking about nebraska. Im talking about washington. It is important that we also take a look at how we can engage and enfranchise