Washblog

PM,

Are you suggesting that, with an almost three to one margin of caucus delegates at the precinct level for Obama over Clinton that there might be a mass exodus of support for Obama at the LD level enough to put the outcome there in jeopardy? Are there enough affidavits out there to alter a three to one advantage?

2nd, I'm not sure I accept your premise that yesterday's results did anything other than reinforce Obama's lead of pledged delegates (which, the last I heard, actually elect the eventual nominee)

Peace,
Chad (The Left) Shue

by The Left Shue on Wed Mar 05, 2008 at 12:34:20 PM PST

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  Particle's concerns are well grounded. The precedent for legal action was let out of the bag in 2000 and 2004. The possibilities for serious and divisive actions are growing every day. Probably not so much here in Whitman County where we had no affidavits and all of 12 delegates to the 5th CD and the State Convention.
  WSDCC needs to take action to clarify the rules, and the direction from the Executive Committee should be broad in the cause of greater access and openness.  
  If this melts down on the national scale, we should still remain honorable and above the fray. From our standpoint, this issue is a simple matter of the WSDCC Executive Committee issuing a declaration along the lines suggested by PM.
 

Dave Gibney Pullman

by gibney on Wed Mar 05, 2008 at 10:33:34 PM PST

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I assume that the challenge to affidavits would be based on the reason for submission -- religious practice, military, disability -- rather than residence in the specified precinct.  After all, the latter is easily checked by referring to the voterfile.

It's all well and good to try to codify rules on their acceptance, but if our experience in the 43rd LD is any guide, it won't make a bit of difference in the results.  In this LD, which must have one of the higher counts of potential affidavit-submitters of any jurisdiction in the state (since we're extremely Democratic, have very high turnout, and a large number of Jewish voters), the organization received precisely FIVE affidavits.  That's five caucus"goers" out of 20,090 ... two one-hundredths of one percent of our attendees.

I can't speak directly for any of the others we handled, but the one affidavit that happened to come from my precinct made absolutely no difference in the outcome.  The submitter was just one of the 130 Obama supporters out of the 163 caucus participants.  The outcome would have been 8-2 with or without the affidavit.

Was the affidavit submitted for a legitimate reason?  I have no idea whatsoever.  The submitter's last name "sounded" Jewish, but there was no confirmation sought.

You're only young once, but you can be immature forever -- Larry Andersen
Blogging at Peace Tree Farm

by N in Seattle on Thu Mar 06, 2008 at 09:28:45 AM PST

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I do not hold that the sky will fall if the party does nothing here.
What I do know is that a wave of new people are getting involved and this is a great thing to cheer about in the short run. If we provide a positive experience, where it is easy to do so, then for very little energy, we will have a larger active party leading up to this years state and local elections. It just makes sense for the party to be good stewards by avoiding conflict whenever conflict can be avoided.

by Particle Man on Thu Mar 06, 2008 at 12:21:38 PM PST

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complex.

the more rules, the procedures,

the more stuff goes wrong.

rmm.

http://www.liemail.com/BambooGrassroots.html

by rmdSeaBos on Thu Mar 06, 2008 at 04:54:44 PM PST

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Some within the Clinton campaign have already indicated an intent to file credentials challenges to some of these affidavit votes.

Further downstream, you speak of the Clinton campaign cherry-picking the affidavits.

Of course, if they did this, it would not go unnoticed.

PM, what do you think the odds are that they'll follow through with these cherry-picked challenges?

by DWE on Thu Mar 06, 2008 at 05:01:11 PM PST

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Hit the netowrk news today:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/07/florida.michigan/index.html

by ktkeller on Sun Mar 09, 2008 at 12:24:22 AM PST

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Comrade Particle raises a good point here about the affidavits, but it doesn't go NEARLY far enough.

This is not just a Washington State problem. With Democratic party caucus systems across the country happily overwhelmed by turnout, one has to understand two things:

1) The "law of large numbers" means that the huge turnout makes the results more reflective of the will of the party than they have been in the past.

It may be that when single-voter precincts were very common, hijinks could potentially move large numbers of delegates. Therefore credentials challenges may have been a more important part of the process. Fortunately, the very large number of caucus-goers this year means that - as a statistical fact - it is very unlikely that the results were altered by improperly credentialed caucus-goers. N points this out very well on the affidavits question.

That said:

2) Murphy's Law - or it's relevant component "the law of large numbers OF PEOPLE" mean that there were, inevitably, a LOT of technical errors in the process on February 9. Worse, there were a lot of things that may LOOK like technical errors, but ultimately are not.  

Therefore credentials committees are going to have to put a very high burden on challenges or the process could potentially get completely bogged down. The decision has to be results-based. The first question must be:

1)"Does this challenge have the REAL potential to affect the delegate distribution coming from this *LD*, as a whole???"

2. Does this challenged error really represent a lack of, or departure from the good faith we PRESUME in every Democrat who participated in the process

3. Are we confident that this this challenged error really represents an ultimate result that is truly different from happenstance? Are we sure this error is not simply balanced out somewhere else? Are we confident that this SMALL error would ACTUALLY cause us to make a larger error further on?

The LD caucuses in 2004 were, I understand, somewhat arduous affairs in many cases. My worry would be that one group or other or even an individual might try to get their demands met by bogging down the process completely, burying it in challenges of all sorts.

If Dems demand precision from a process that, because of huge turnout, was happily and wonderfully representative - but inevitably less than letter-perfect - you could lose the entire point. Good faith will produce a good result.

by dlaw on Tue Mar 11, 2008 at 11:43:19 AM PST

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thank you very much

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by shooooq on Thu Jul 10, 2008 at 04:36:24 PM PST

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