Are you equally concerned about the blatant ignoring of the rules by the Clinton majority in El Paso in how you allocate at-large delegates to the state convention?
http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_90452 56
El Paso delegate fight could be resolved soon By Ramon Bracamontes / El Paso Times Article Launched: 04/25/2008 12:00:00 AM MDT The challenge questioning whether the El Paso County Democratic Party properly seated its delegates for the state party convention may be settled this weekend, and if it is not, the challenge will linger until the state convention in June, officials said. El Paso lawyer and longtime Democrat Don Williams is challenging the way the county Democrats selected the at-large delegates who will represent El Paso in Austin at the state Democratic convention. In his challenge, which was sent to the state party earlier this month, Williams claims that of the 48 at-large state delegates selected by a committee, 37 should have been delegates who support Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for president. Instead, the committee appointed only 11 Obama-supporting delegates and 37 Hillary Rodham Clinton delegates. "The issue is not what happened on the floor and which delegates were elected at the convention," Williams said. "It's the at-large delegates who were seated who are in question. They were supposed to reflect what the convention looked like." According to a report issued at the El Paso County Democratic Party convention, of those in attendance, 75 percent signed up as Clinton delegates, and 25 percent signed up as Obama delegates. During the precinct elections, 120 Clinton delegates, or 90 percent, were elected and only seven Obama delegates were elected. Williams contends that because of the precinct conventions, the at-large delegates seated by the committee should Advertisement have been selected in a manner that reflected the convention's attendance -- 25 percent for Obama, 75 percent for Clinton. The final delegate count ended 157 for Clinton, 18 for Obama. It should have been 131 for Clinton and 54 for Obama, Williams said.
By Ramon Bracamontes / El Paso Times Article Launched: 04/25/2008 12:00:00 AM MDT
The challenge questioning whether the El Paso County Democratic Party properly seated its delegates for the state party convention may be settled this weekend, and if it is not, the challenge will linger until the state convention in June, officials said.
El Paso lawyer and longtime Democrat Don Williams is challenging the way the county Democrats selected the at-large delegates who will represent El Paso in Austin at the state Democratic convention.
In his challenge, which was sent to the state party earlier this month, Williams claims that of the 48 at-large state delegates selected by a committee, 37 should have been delegates who support Illinois Sen. Barack Obama for president.
Instead, the committee appointed only 11 Obama-supporting delegates and 37 Hillary Rodham Clinton delegates.
"The issue is not what happened on the floor and which delegates were elected at the convention," Williams said. "It's the at-large delegates who were seated who are in question. They were supposed to reflect what the convention looked like."
According to a report issued at the El Paso County Democratic Party convention, of those in attendance, 75 percent signed up as Clinton delegates, and 25 percent signed up as Obama delegates. During the precinct elections, 120 Clinton delegates, or 90 percent, were elected and only seven Obama delegates were elected.
Williams contends that because of the precinct conventions, the at-large delegates seated by the committee should Advertisement
have been selected in a manner that reflected the convention's attendance -- 25 percent for Obama, 75 percent for Clinton.
The final delegate count ended 157 for Clinton, 18 for Obama. It should have been 131 for Clinton and 54 for Obama, Williams said.
I would love to hear from Clinton supporters on this and the many other rumors of voter intimidation, lying and other Rovian tactics used against Obama voters..
of any sort of intimadation of any Obama supporter. I think you all are blowing smoke because I know what I saw and it tracks exactly with the kind of tactics that John recorded in El Paso County.
You also said that your county caucus voted overwhelmingly for Clinton and correlated closely to the 72% of the vote she got in the primary. I'd say that's pretty ineffective intimidation.
is that only in areas where we stopped fraud did we have enough people on the ground to catch it.
The central lesson from this is the big picture that big well-run counties had similar popular and caucus votes. In El Paso and Bexar, we documented a lot of fraud. It WAS ultimately ineffective because it was thwarted or overturned.
You're right. There was a lot of fraud in El Paso and Bexar. Both SD-29 and SD-26 have delegations to state that do not match the signins at the county convention. Clinton is overweighted in both because they did not follow the rules for allocating at large delegates, but thanks to the committees in place, these can be rectified at the state convention.
Pacific John,
As a fellow Texas voter, I am sympathetic to your plight. I do believe your story has a lot of hearsay, but I have also heard a lot of hearsay from fellow Obama supporters about intimidation in my county, Tarrant. I give them the benefit of the doubt, so I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, as well.
That said, there are problems with the argument you are making:
You are saying that the problems you witnessed or heard of are indicative of the entire Texas results. I find this notion to be logically defunct. Assuming the accusations are true, you are saying that one or two counties with irregularities prove that the entire process was inaccurate if it didn't match the ratio you set up, namely that popular and caucus votes needed to match. Part of the problem in this was that election workers were not telling democratic voters to come back to the caucus. Nor did they tell voters that they needed to have proof that they voted when they came back to caucus.
I also find it bizarre that you quote El Paso as an example of a place where fraud was avoided when another commenter on this thread posted an article that showed Obama was deprived of delegates that he should have gotten according to the caucus vote in that county.
In my county (SD 12, from precinct 3157) a Clinton supporter was Temporary Chair. He allowed a Clinton supporter to bring a motion to the floor to seat all challenged delegates 50/50, which would have given Clinton a 5% increase in delegates in my SD. The motion was defeated. However, when an Obama supporter tried to bring a motion to seat challenged delegates as is, he would not recognize the supporter and claimed that the convention hadn't actually convened. So apparently, there were attempts at fraud on both sides around the state. I suppose it just depends on which county you were in.
The article was in the El Paso Times, as you can see. Do you just refuse to read it?
Why you must be a troll! Posting Facts? OH MY GOD! Thats not allowed at Mydd in an obamahate thread!! UR PART OF DE CONSPIRACY!! U OBAMAITE! I BET YOUR BALCK TOO!
Sorry just preemptively posting what the wingnuts are about to :P
i wrote a diary on that, as a member of sen. district 129......
http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/4/14/2152 25/830#readmore
And as to the point, everything you mentioned is provided for in the rules, and yes, they were ignored.
The first being that if a particular candidate's delegation (this is from precinct to county) does not have enough alternates of their own kind to seat in place of missing alternates of same kind, then alternates of any presidential preference (in this case, only Obama in a 2-way race) ARE seated. That's just the rules.
The second point was concerning the allocation of at large delegates from the county to the state level to bring the entire delegation in-line with the sign in at the county convention. That sign in, as both side agree, was 75-25 in El Paso SD-29. The delegation to state is supposed to be of the same make-up. It was not (it was a 90-10 split). This is simply wrong and against the rules. In this case, Clinton (naturally) won a majority of the delegates in the precinct by precinct round, overweighting herself to a 90-10 ration of that set. The Clinton controlled committees then simply allocated the at-large delegates in the same 90-10 ration (which is contrary to the rules).
This is indeed before the state credentials committee and they will be very much in the right to revers the incorrect ratio meaning that around two dozen Clinton delegates will flip to Obama delegates because that's what the sign-ins allocated.
