Call for Help: How "pledged" are pledged delegates?

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As the Democratic nominating race has gotten closer, bubbling in the background is the question of whether the "pledged" delegates allocated to each candidate are truly locked into voting for that candidate at the convention, or could be persuaded to switch by a rival candidate.

Clinton first percolated this idea as mentioned in the Washington Post:

...{B}ut the idea keeps rearing its head -- most recently with help from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton herself, in interviews on the campaign trail. Earlier this week, she told the Philadelphia Daily News that pledged delegates "in most states are not pledged."

"You know, there is no requirement that anybody vote for anybody," she said.

Then in an interview published today, Clinton brought it up again. "Every delegate with very few exceptions is free to make up his or her mind however they choose," Clinton told Time's Mark Halperin. "We talk a lot about so-called pledged delegates, but every delegate is expected to exercise independent judgment."

Is this really true? Technically, yes. Rule 12-J of the DNC Delegate Selection Rules stipulates that:

Delegates elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.

So the DNC rules do not allow the state parties to mandate that delegates vote for their presidential preference. However, some state legislatures have implemented election law that does require the delegates from their state to vote for their preference through at least one ballot at their respective party's convention.

So how feasible is this? Most national convention delegates are vetted by the campaigns ahead of time to ensure die-hard loyalists are the ones most likely to advance; although with the huge surge in participation by ordinary folks in this election this has created some backlash when the results of such vetting excludes a lot of supporters.

That said, some preliminary research on my part found it difficult to find which states require pledged delegates to stay committed to their candidates and which do not. So, similar to our efforts to utilize our readers to track the superdelegates, we'd like to ask you to help us figure out which states have election law around delegates and which are "open" for pledged delegates to decide at the convention.

So far the only concrete example I've found is for Georgia (OCGA 21-2-196), which requires delegates to be committed through the 2nd ballot:

Any person selected as a delegate or delegate alternate to such national convention shall file a qualification oath with the Secretary of State pledging support at the convention to the candidate of their political party or body for the office of President of the United States for whom they are selected to support. The oath shall state that the delegate or delegate alternate affirms to support such candidate until the candidate is either nominated by such convention or receives less than 35 percent of the votes for nomination by such convention during any balloting, or until the candidate releases the delegates from such pledge. No delegate shall be required to vote for such candidate after two convention nominating ballots have been completed.

If you find examples either way (committed or open), please post a comment here with relevant citation and link, and we'll update the site over time.

Thanks!

Update from Matt: From PolitickerME.com, Maine State Chairman John Knutson reinforces everything Charlie said:

In surprise move, DNC says MI and FL will be seated on standing committees

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Surprising a number of folks, the DNC announced that Florida and Michigan's representatives to the standing Credentials Committee will be seated, regardless of whether their delegates are ultimately seated at the convention.

Why is this important? Because the Credentials Committee will be the one that ultimately decides whether the state delegations are seated at the convention, especially if the situation remains unresolved going all the way up to August. While each state will be barred from voting on the seating of their own delegates, they can vote on each other's, creating some interesting opportunities for horse-trading votes.

The article at Politico quotes a number of folks as being confused as to how MI and FL can be included in the standing committee if their delegates cannot be seated:
Allan Katz, the lone member of the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee to vote against sanctioning Florida in August 2007, said the DNC’s current position “strikes me as odd.”

Katz, a Florida superdelegate who supports Obama, added that, “it doesn’t make any sense to presume that a full cadre of representatives from Florida and Michigan could serve on these committees absent there being a delegation.”

Katz, like all those interviewed, was also quick to offer the benefit of the doubt to DNC leadership. But, he said, “there is a lack of structural sense to this. I think people are confused.”

Marc Ambinder over at The Atlantic agrees with the DNC, stating that any sanctions that affect a state's membership on the standing committee's is a separate sanction that has to be adopted independently, and this was not done for either Florida or Michigan.

My own analysis of the Democratic Party's National Call to Convention also supports the DNC view.

Rule 7.A.1 and 3 states that:

Base: A base of 161 members, casting 158 votes, allocated to the states and territories in accordance with the same distribution formula used to allocate
delegates to the Democratic National Convention.

3. Delegate Status: Members of the standing committees need not be delegates or alternates to the Democratic National Convention.

What may cause some difficulty is that the allocation of each state's delegation to the standing committees must match the results of that state's presidential preferences (Rule 7.C.1) . How this would work in Michigan, where Obama wasn't even on the ballot, is currently unknown.

According to the Politico article, neither Obama nor Clinton have a majority of votes on the Credentials Committee to sway it either way should a challenge reach them. It is believed that by including Florida and Michigan on the committee, it would benefit Clinton as the states will have the ability to press their state's case and vote on the other's status. Combined the two states have 14 votes (8 for Florida and 6 for Michigan - Appendix D of the Call to Convention).

Assuming that the issue still doesn't get resolved at the Credentials Committee, Clinton's last hope would be for a "Minority Report" from the Credentials Committee to be adopted and passed to the full convention delegates. When the proposal to adopt the Credentials Committee report is introduced, Clinton can hope that a majority of delegates vote to reject the report without Florida and Michigan added, forcing the Committee to re-convene and bring up a new proposal for adoption. The Convention would then be stuck until a final Credentials Report could be adopted (Rule 7.C.1). Only a 20% vote would be required to include a Minority Report to the full convention.

But that's getting way ahead of ourselves. For now, it increases the drama and pressure for a solution prior to the convention in August.

Update from Matt: The Michigan Primary is still dead:

A re-vote in Michigan is likely dead on arrival after Michigan Democratic Party leaders conceded "it is not practical to conduct" a primary or caucus re-vote. The Obama campaign has now called for a 50-50 split of the Michigan delegates. The Clinton campaign, however, says Michigan "votes cannot be ignored" and is circulating a petition to still count votes and delegates from Michigan and Florida

Could Edwards be a Kingmaker?

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There's been talk of Edwards playing kingmaker at the convention, sending his delegates one way or another for whatever reason. But I think this assumes a time gone by, when delegates would march in lockstep for their state bosses and/or their candidate. The Politco agrees:

And his delegates won’t automatically follow his lead, and might instead shift to a media-anointed front-runner.

“Nobody’s bound to him. You guys, the media, are the ones who will decide,” said one veteran of past delegate processes who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he supports one of Edwards’ rivals.

Edwards could make a deal or an endorsement, but we shouldn't assume that his delegates would follow blindly in line.

Campaigns preparing for brokered convention

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Delegate tracking operations? Brokered Convention Madness has broken out in the campaigns:

Still, the prospect of serious wrangling in Denver remains a distinct possibility, and the leading campaigns say they’ve begun to focus on the prospect of running the kind of delegate operations that were common in the 1980s, when campaigns would employ a dozen or more staffers, each assigned to minding a set of delegates.

“The most likely scenario now after the fifth of February is that Obama and Clinton will basically split the delegates,” said [Tad Devine, a veteran Democratic consultant who ran Michael Dukakis’s delegate-tracking operation in 1988].

“The only real question is will there be a third candidate who can win between 10 and 20 percent of the delegates, and become a serious force.”

Forgetting the question of why Mike Dukakis needed a delegate tracking operation in 1988 in Atlanta, I'm still of the belief that this will be decided before the convention. But if it isn't, we are in for a great summer.

Update: Even Kos is catching Brokered Convention Madness:

What's interesting about this whole affair is that neither Clinton nor Barack are delivering knockout blows. Hillary will likely emerge with a couple more delegates than Barack, but nothing to essentially knock him out of the race. He's got plenty of cash to go on. She certainly does. This race can drag out for a long time.

Two brokered conventions in the same year? Wouldn't that be something!

Superdelegate madness: 1984 version

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Ah, the good old days:

On the morning of June 6, 1984, Walter Mondale's campaign aides woke the Democratic presidential candidate to inform him of a big problem. California and New Jersey had held primaries the day before. The former vice president had confidently scheduled a press conference to announce that he had finally amassed enough delegates to claim the nomination over Colorado Sen. Gary Hart.

There was just one glitch: Mondale was about 40 delegates short. Hart had won California; even worse, Mondale had not done well enough there to pick up as many delegates as the campaign had counted on. So frantic Mondale aides hit the phones to the superdelegates. These were the Democratic insiders who had been given a big new voice in the process, a change to party rules engineered by Mondale backers anticipating the need for just such a firewall.

Mondale managed to pull it off that day. Though the story may sound like ancient history, it remains relevant -- more relevant than it's been in years -- as a reminder of the importance of the arcane rules for choosing and allocating delegates.

Indeed, 2008 is looking like 1984 on steroids: For the poorly organized, underfinanced insurgent (Hart), substitute a candidate (Barack Obama) with the money and organization to compete with the establishment candidate (Hillary Clinton). For a front-runner about whom the party faithful are hardly enthusiastic (Mondale), substitute a candidate (Clinton) who has a loyal, energized following.

In addition, the biggest factor pointing to an extended, delegate-by-delegate slog is one that didn't exist in 1984: the relentless arithmetic of the party's proportional representation rules, in which candidates receive delegates according to their share of the vote in each congressional district and, for a smaller number, statewide. Although that provision was adopted in 1988, it has never become relevant, because a clear front-runner has emerged in every contest since.

However, in a close race, the rules make it difficult for a single candidate to pile up a big enough margin to amass the necessary number of delegates. Given the contours of this contest, that may well not happen in the supposed tsunami of voting on Feb. 5, at which point Democrats will have picked 1,818 delegates, 45 percent of the total.

It's only difficult in a 3 or more person race. In a 2 person race, it's hard to deny one of the candidates a majority.

If the race continues beyond Feb. 5, as the Mondale precedent suggests it might, superdelegates could come into play. These bigwigs -- governors, members of Congress, Democratic National Committee members -- account for 796, or nearly 20 percent, of the Democratic delegates. They are finger-in-the-wind fickle. But they could be decisive in a close contest, a factor that would tend to help Clinton, who has already amassed a superdelegate lead.

Then there are the graduate seminar-level questions that could arise if the contest becomes really close or even heads into the convention unsettled. One is the Edwards Factor. Former North Carolina senator John Edwards's path to the nomination seems blocked, but that does not necessarily render him irrelevant. Edwards can keep collecting delegates so long as he receives 15 percent of the vote in a congressional district or statewide.

If so, he could have sway over a potentially decisive share of delegates whom he could urge to back a particular candidate, and his inclination in Obama's direction seems clear. Edwards's delegates would not be obligated to follow his direction, but his view would be influential.

Similarly, and this one is for real rules junkies, there could be a convention fight over seating the Michigan and Florida delegations. Those states have supposedly been stripped of their delegates as punishment for accelerating their primaries to before Feb. 5, but it's not entirely fanciful to imagine that a challenge to their credentials could determine the outcome.

"Real rules junkies"? A convention fight over the Michigan and Florida delegations? Brokered convention madness is breaking out all over.

Brokered Convention Madness

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As happens every four years, what can only be described as "brokered convention madness" has broken out. It's something people can write about, and political reporters and bloggers would just love to report on a convention that really meant something. But it just isn't going to happen. With a hattip to our friends over at The GOP Convention Report, comes this quote from The Corner:

I have been writing about conventions professionally since 1976, and following elections since 1968. Every cycle, the breathless pieces on the brokered convention come out.

It never happened in the last 39 years, and it won't happen next year. When candidates lose a few, their money dries up, and the madness of crowds takes over.

I'll throw another reason out there. The media is relentless in asking trailing candidates when they are going to drop out, totally drowning out any message they have. I mean, Edwards was already getting the question this weekend.

There's absolutely no way one of the top three Democratic candidates won't drop out (and release their delegates) after the rush of primaries in the next few weeks. Now, admittedly, it's easier to construct a scenario on the Republican side, with 4 or 5 major candidates still hanging in, but it's not going to happen.