The accreditation commitee decides who gets "seated" at the convention and may wind up deciding if Florida or Michigan delegates will be able to attend and vote.
The credentials committee is composed of people chosen by the state delegates (my understanding is 158 which works out to each state getting one for every 20 national convention delegates) and a small number of "at-large" members (my understanding is 25) appointed by the DNC chair.
Like the actual delegation to the convention, the committee slots are awarded to the candidates proportionately. For example, my state has three spots on the credentials committee, Obama won the state by 1%. As such, he gets two of the members on the committee and Clinton gets one from my state. To have a hard count of the numbers, you would need to go state-by-state to see how many people that state gets on the committee and then apportion that number based on the results in the state.
With 8 states still to vote, nobody has final numbers yet. However, based on the results to date, my expectation is that neither candidate will have a majority of the committee, leaving control to the appointees of Governor Dean.
More importantly, the credential committee does not make the final decision as to who gets seated. They make an inital report to the Convention of who should get seated which forms the temporary roll of the convention. If enough members of the minority of the committee objects, they can file a minority report. In that case, the Convention decides which report to accept. If there is not an agreement about this issue prior to the convention, there will be a minority report. It is only once a decision is made on the credentials report that there is a permanent roll of the convention.
September 29th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
after what happened in 04 I can only hope it is not Florida.
References :
September 29th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
The credentials committee is composed of people chosen by the state delegates (my understanding is 158 which works out to each state getting one for every 20 national convention delegates) and a small number of "at-large" members (my understanding is 25) appointed by the DNC chair.
Like the actual delegation to the convention, the committee slots are awarded to the candidates proportionately. For example, my state has three spots on the credentials committee, Obama won the state by 1%. As such, he gets two of the members on the committee and Clinton gets one from my state. To have a hard count of the numbers, you would need to go state-by-state to see how many people that state gets on the committee and then apportion that number based on the results in the state.
With 8 states still to vote, nobody has final numbers yet. However, based on the results to date, my expectation is that neither candidate will have a majority of the committee, leaving control to the appointees of Governor Dean.
More importantly, the credential committee does not make the final decision as to who gets seated. They make an inital report to the Convention of who should get seated which forms the temporary roll of the convention. If enough members of the minority of the committee objects, they can file a minority report. In that case, the Convention decides which report to accept. If there is not an agreement about this issue prior to the convention, there will be a minority report. It is only once a decision is made on the credentials report that there is a permanent roll of the convention.
References :