What would it take to reform the democratic party nominating rules?

[Cheese Sandwich]

For presidential nominations.

Like for example if we don't like the idea of superdelegates, or we just think there are too many. Like maybe instead of 20% of the total delegates, they should just be 10% or 15% of the total. And say for example we wanted to adjust this for next time, for year 2020 going forward. How would we go about it? What are the rules and process for this?

[mythology]

1. Get enough people in the state Democratic parties

The chairperson of the DNC (currently U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida) is elected by vote of members of the Democratic National Committee. The DNC is composed of the chairs and vice-chairs of each state Democratic Party Committee, two hundred members apportioned among the states based on population and generally elected either on the ballot by primary voters or by the State Democratic Party Committee, a number of elected officials serving in an ex-officio capacity, and a variety of representatives of major Democratic Party constituencies.

The DNC establishes rules for the caucuses and primaries which choose delegates to the Democratic National Convention, but the caucuses and primaries themselves are most often run not by the DNC but instead by each state. All DNC members are superdelegates (i.e. unpledged delegates) to the Democratic National Convention and can influence a close Presidential race. Outside of the process of nominating a Presidential candidate, the DNC's role in actually selecting candidates to run on the Democratic Party ticket is minimal.

Once you do that, when the rules come up, vote to change the super delegates. In other words, you're unlikely to be able to do it in time for 2020 as it will take time to get enough people into power in the state parties. This is especially true in the case where Clinton wins the nomination (and even more so the presidency), and some significant number of Sanders supporters either leave the party or lose interest in politics. Building political power takes time. If Sanders supporters are serious about making substantive changes to super delegates, it will take time and staying politically engaged.

But you're also going to have trouble getting the current DNC members to vote against the super delegates as they are super delegates.

[Recursion]

4. The Rules & Bylaws Committee could theoretically do it right now

Though I think the full executive committee would have to ratify their decision.

[Agschmid]

2. Ask Tad Devine, rumor on the street is he had something to do with them.

I'm all for them being gone completely.

[Recursion]

3. The DNC has a rules & bylaws committee that meets annually

However I doubt the normal committee would make that drastic a change; when the supers were added it was through an extraordinary committee authorized by the executive committee and chaired by NC governor Jim Hunt. Removing them would probably at least politically require another extraordinary committee (just technically the standard rules & bylaws committee could do it, but politically they would probably need the cover of an executive committee authorization).

The number of superdelegates has been tweaked by the rules committee a couple of times since the superdelegates were added. If you're just interested in lowering them, you'd want to lobby the R&BC members, particularly the co-chairs Jim Roosevelt of MA and Lorraine Miller of TX.

[Cheese Sandwich]

5. Do you know if the party has any educational material that explains the basic rules?

Like something that explains the process for making a rules change?

Or something that explains the structure of the Party, what are the powers of the various officers, what are the different committees, and who serves on them?

I'm just looking for something like an introductory civics lesson in how power works inside the Democratic Party.

[Recursion]

6. That's a good question, and I don't know of one

https://www.democrats.org/ is obviously a good place to start, but for the most part you only even get to see this stuff, let alone work on changing it, by working your way up through your state party structure. (I don't think there's any active attempt at secrecy; it's just that 99% of people's eyes glaze over when you start talking about committee structures.)

Frank Leone of Virginia runs a pretty cool "inside baseball" blog about the DNC here, though a lot of it is Virginia-specific he also writes about national committee stuff:

http://demrulz.org/

but it might presume a better working knowledge than somebody just coming straight into it would have.

Now that you mention it, that would be a great thing for somebody to make: a civics 101 for the party structure.

[Cheese Sandwich]

7. Yeah it would be cool if somebody put that together.

I'd like to find out who are actually all the members of the DNC.

I looked here: http://www.p2016.org/parties/dnc16.html

There is some info. I learned

447 Members of the DNC
...includes 75 at-large members who are nominated by the Chairman and approved by the full DNC.

Executive Committee
64 members; oversees affairs of the party in between meetings of the full committee and meets four times a year.

Standing Committees
Rules and Bylaws - Co-chairs: Jim Roosevelt (MA) and Lorraine Miller (TX)
Credentials - Co-chairs: Karen Carter Peterson (LA) and Andrés W. López (PR)

Resolutions - Co-Chairs: Jim Zogby (DC) and Hilda Solis (CA)

I looked here too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_National_Committee

Learned this:

The DNC is composed of the chairs and vice-chairs of each state Democratic Party Committee and over 200 members elected by Democrats in all 50 states and the territories. Its chairperson is elected by the Committee. It conducts fundraising to support its activities.

Interesting stuff. I wonder if there is any official Democratic Party website that lists basic info like who are all the members of the national committee and how they are selected.

[Recursion]

8. You can drill down through democrats.org to find a lot of that

eg https://www.democrats.org/about/our-party/party-organization or https://www.democrats.org/about/our-leaders

But yeah I agree some sort of roster would be a good thing; if I can scratch one up I'll post it and buzz you. I still have one from 2012 back when I was in the DC "state" (sort of) party but it's probably obsolete at this point.

[Cheese Sandwich]

9. Here is the charter and bylaws...

From here http://www.democrats.org/organization/the-democratic-national-committee

charter and bylaws...
http://s3.amazonaws.com/uploads.democrats.org/Downloads/DNC_Charter__Bylaws_9.17.15.pdf

It has the raw info I guess, the rules. Good starting point. I wish somebody would put it into a summary lecture though.