Our Party

Introducing the Democratic Change Commission

Posted by Jonah on June 25, 2009 at 11:46 AM

The Democratic Change Commission will be having their first meeting, open to the public, on Saturday June 27th in Washington, DC. We will provide highlights of the meeting here on the blog.

Following the Democratic Presidential primaries and caucuses of the 2008 presidential nominating campaign the Democratic National Convention Rules Committee, at the request of then Senator Obama, drafted a resolution calling for a commission to review and recommend changes to the 2012 nominating process. That was adopted on August 25, 2008 by the full Democratic National Convention and thus created the Democratic Change Commission.

The first part of the resolution outlines the structure and purpose of the Commission. According to the resolution, the DNC Chair has to appoint 35 members, who must represent the diversity in our Party, to sit on the Change Earlier this year Chairman Kaine announced the 37 Commission members, including two co-chairs. These members are grassroots activists, local and federal elected officials, labor leaders and a wide range of other backgrounds. Here is a full list of the commission members and their biographical information. We will be introducing several members from the Commission throughout our coverage of the Commission's work. We welcome questions you would like to ask them and we will try to present several of the top ones during upcoming interviews.

The resolution's next sections outline the areas the commission will be charged with improving. The first area the Commission must review is the nominating calendar, the scheduling and sequence of presidential nominating events (primaries and caucuses). The Commission is charged with making recommendations to significantly reduce the number of unpledged delegates (also know as super delegates). Finally the Commission must consider ways to improve caucuses to increase the ability of Democratic voters to participate.

During the 2008 nominating process the Democratic Party was able to bring its ideas and messages for improving government to every state in the country. We were able to reach new voters and engage many long time voters. This success was critical to our victory this past November. We learned a lot from the nominating process and believe through improvements we will be able to continue to reach new Americans and build on our success.

We look forward to providing you access and coverage of the work of the Commission. If you have questions please share them in the comments.

Comments (3) «

Will this commission be working with the local elected precinct committee and executive boards, or just the State Executive committee?

Are you trying to replace the elected precinct committee process?

1
Esmeralda on June 26, 2009 at 06:57 AM

555

2
Harpo-TheWatchman on June 29, 2009 at 02:23 PM

666

3
Harpo-TheWatchman on June 29, 2009 at 02:23 PM


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