Liveblog: The Delegate Debate

By GottaLaff

Again, please forgive typos and shorthand.

MSNBC's Nora O'Donnell: Wexler, yelling at some of his presentation, "let us unify, let us move on" essentially saying Obama has made a major concession, by giving them half of the vote. But how will the Clinton campaign respond? Ickes tried to question him about whether they'd oppose a full delegation. Wexler said he'd stick to the rules of the committee.

Andrea Mitchell: Ickes argued that the rules don't argue against 100% seating. That Fla and Michigan have been punished enough.

Chuck Todd: It's a victory for the Clinton campaign, maybe not what she wanted, but a big victory.

ON TO MICHIGAN:

Mitchell: A much harder argument, no unity at all.

Commentator: Barack Obama's name wasn't on the Michigan ballot. "Uncommitted", does that equal Obama's votes? That will be a major point of contention.

Chuck Todd: Does the Michigan primary count? Clinton, Obama, DNC hardliners are the 3 groups arguing. We don't have a consensus yet on that.

Michigan Democratic Chair, Mark Brewer: Seat the entire delegation. They've been punished enough. Any further punishment will hurt our chances in the general election. Michigan has been bypassed to this point. ... by both candidates. There is no advertising, no staff, no events, no voter registration, no GOTV. Plus, McCain reminds the voters of Michigan of this. A reduction of delegates will only add fuel to this. Obama/Edwards supporters organized in a massive scale... so, an extraordinary 40% pledged for Uncommitted. So.. they weren't uncommitted. At the subsequent convention, these results were confirmed.
We encouraged people to vote uncommitted, because we were worried there would be uncounted write-ins. We looked at the write-ins, and there were 30,000 uncounted votes statewide, based on exit polling. Most of those were probably for Obama. They were not included in any calculation. So, we adjust the delegate allocation to reflect the true state of voter preference based on ALL the data (exit polls, our study of uncounted write-ins, etc.), which is fairer. That is the basis for the 69-59 allocation.

Q: Exit polls aren't reliable. Why use them?

Brewer: Because you had an incomplete ballot, which didn't give us a true picture of the preference of voters.

Q: It's clear that Uncommitted is a presidential preference. They are awarded delegates. They're bound by no one, like superdelegates. They probably WERE for Obama, but: A willy-nilly arbitrary assignment of delegates when you've had a vote between 2 legitimate preferences, this will be chaotic. If we take some data from a primary, some from exit polls, we're really in trouble. (applause) We shouldn't set a precedent.

Brewer: This is not the normal situation. Every bit of evidence shows they were for Obama or Edwards. So we think it makes sense to allocate them officially to Obama.

Q: I feel like Alice in Wonderland. We have hard votes, but then we'd discount them with exit polls. If we could do that, Kerry would be president right now. I get the same sense with Florida, wondering what would happen if more people had voted.

Q: Virtually all the candidates were pulling their names off of the ballot, so you did what you could do to conduct the election. Would the results be different if all the names were on the ballot? It was an Alice in Wonderland election, as was said. You could have built other numbers, so is this legitmate?

Brewer: If the ballot had been complete, the result would be close to the exit poll, 46-35 perhaps.

Q: What is this challenge saying with respect to the rules? I agree we could issue a waiver to seat the entire delegation, but... second: What specific rule of the charter authorizes us to allocate or assign numbers of delegates to particular candidates? The Fair Reflection Rule? Delegates SHALL be allocated that reflects preference or uncommitted status. It says SHALL. Are you saying this rule applies here?

Brewer: That doesn't apply here, because there was no caucus or primary that reflects voter preference. I'm not relying on that rule. We had an incomplete primary, so we have to do SOMEthing. I brought the best and only available data to allocate...

Ickes: The 4 candidates voluntarily withdrew their names, but no party rule required that. Some said they did it to curry favor with the likes of Iowa (applause).

Brewer: My concern isn't the candidates, but the voters having their will expressed (bigger applause).