I hope that going forward, the process is improved upon. The outreach regarding this meeting, i was one of many was cced on the meetings and nobody ever got back to us. I understand the language of inclusive the and participation. We finally received an email ,ess than 24 hours before nobody ever got back to me or anyone i know about the meeting. The policy of cracking what we preach. Now these recommendations are going to be going to the rules committee, and i would hope that we could improve upon the image of, sorry to say, it is out there all over social media, it is being talked about. From the talk of wanting to improve performance and make the party more transparent, the exact opposite is happening. Another case in point, i am one of the coauthors of the autopsy report. Put a summary. Time, wet asking for are simply tried to make is available to committee members, as if wewice it was were passing on something offensive. We are loyal democratic members. Im a party officer, i am an executive director of my own state party. I would hope that we could find shed is in an official matter. Thank you, we are sharing that with all of the committee members. And all the other materials we received will be scanned as we have done in every other meeting. Everyone should get them, there is no reason they cant be headed out. I appreciate that, we just had a miscommunication. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Do we have the commission at their seats . Please. Could you just hand them out please. Thank you. Could Commission Members take their seats and we can get started, please. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I am jen omalley and im the chair and i am joined by my friend and vice chair larry cohen and i call the meeting to order. I would like to first ask the members and those with us to join in the pledge of allegiance. [all] i pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, i now ask patrice im going to ask helen to call the roll. [roll call] thank you so much. I am going to hand the floor cohen toicechair give us recap and an overview of what we are doing today. Thank you. Let me say to all 21 of us and those hear from the public, we set off on this journey formally in may. We came here from three , it makesnominees this a struggle. Everybody participates where they came from, it does not take a math genius to figure out the solution. Or the outcome. It is not a solution. , particularly cousins where particularly because of where we came from, a lot was accomplished yesterday. Areas,ere three main unpledged delegates, primaries and party reform. Today, the fourth area, caucuses, and we will be going back to Unfinished Business in those three. Items from itgest , it is never been about perfection, but what i call large steps is not giant steps in terms of voters first. Voters first in terms of eliminating 400 superdelegates at of 715 on the first ballot for thest president ial nomination of the United States. Voters first saying loud and clear that in primaries, this party stands behind sameday registration, automatic photo registration, sameday Party Registration. Aat this party stands behind process in every state in terms of the election of the leadership of the Democratic Party that is open and clear and as simple as possible so that activists can get involved in the party and run and not feel like they have a chance. And not feel like they dont have a chance. And others,s here ins will be about what we do the states, not just what we do here and what the dnc does, at every level. It will not be about 447 people, it is about millions of people and how they take up this challenge and pass. Path. I am proud to say i have worked for this chair appointed by hillary clinton, myself appointed by bernie sanders, that we have worked together in the forums open to the public, not just opened the participation. Found lots ofwe onmon ground not just based the commission. As i said yesterday, we are governed by that resolution. Specific senate, including the make appear. No one was under any illusions when we agree to put in hundreds of hours. Between us and the activists watching. Today as we conclude, i say this to all of us, because 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. We 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 rehearsed, not perfect, but i am proud to have been your vice chair and to have worked with you. I hope today we can finish in that spirit. [applause] thank you, larry. We are ready to get to business. We still have work before us. Important work. 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. The commission has been mandated 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 well as from state parties and a number of large or small states. We have done a lot of work and a 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 around caucuses 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. Making sure votes are cast in writing. Provide for a recount. Or a recanvas. Lock the allocation of delegates on the initial round of voting. Limit the 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 information 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 open it up to the commission for amendments on the caucus section. 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 move 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. In the caucus process, what is expressed at the end of the night is the number of delegates people want. 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 state and your election return would be reported as zero on caucus night. I think that is unfair when we are looking at 2020 with a crowded field. There are going to be a lot of candidates introducing themselves for the first time to voters in iowa. And to the nation. I think it is important given iowas first in the nation status of voters and subsequent states know candidate x got 13 of the vote in iowa and not 0 . This certainly impacted governor omalleys campaign, where his Election Night report of state delegate equivalents was far below what i believe was his overall percentage of the vote of the people coming to the caucus. I would replace the language in d, which currently says require the public reporting of the total statewide 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. To determine viability. 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 is not particularly burdensome, 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 delegate allegation, delegate allocation, they can continue to do it in the way they currently do it. Thank you. Second. I have 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 recount because if there is a realignment so that the votes that are used 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 tier votes as completed, and 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 whom prior tor realignment. Whether iowa 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 allocation. No one i know will say i want a recount of the first impression. The reality is, in the instance of a state that is tracking their first vote and then will have a realignment, and that realignment, wherever they end up, 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. Youre going to have two sets 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 iowa has traditionally had one. That is the state delegate equivalent. We would be going not from one to two, but from one to two to three potentially. 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. We are going to have to have an audit process and we want to make sure it is fair to all candidates. Mayor webb . You anticipated half of my question, i wanted to know what jans position was because she was from iowa. Thank you. 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. An improved process is a better caucus for all of us. While we prefer to do the counts based on delegates, the result of a true caucus, we can deal with whatever the Commission Decides upon. We are flexible and open to suggestions. 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 recorded and kept so weand would be able to abide by this. One other thing i want to make a note of, further down in the recommendations, it does 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 in create a tracking and reporting system that states can use. I bring that up to say that 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 . By have a question. Ok. 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 expression. Right. First is in there, it is not being switched. Thank you very much. All those in 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. I have an amendment. Amendment 34. It changes page 20, line 12 and 13. The mandate currently asks us to make recommendations on expanding the use of primaries. This is what my amendment does. Currently the language reads in states with five or more congressional districts that hold a state run 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 exception and begins with, there shall be a presumption that state delegate selection plans to 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. In 2016 there were only two 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. In the state run primaries, no money was spent in organizing anything, 80,000 participants 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. Do we 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. The premise for these red states, 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. For us to say were going to 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. I have a similar but 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 the primary, 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. Nursing washington should go to a primary. You are saying washington to go to a primary. You are saying people are disenfranchised. To me this is another way of how they have been disenfranchised. You are looking at nebraska but im talking about washington. It is still disenfranchisement. I think in creating the opportunity, it is important that we also take a look at how we can engage and enfranchise people and make sure it is helping Party Building. I do not want to get into this, but i think we