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Tensions Flare, State Chairwoman Flees in Delegate Dispute at Nevada Democratic Convention (Video)

Sunday, May 15, 2016 17:17

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(Before It's News)

Sen. Barbara Boxer addresses the crowd assembled at the Nevada Democratic convention in Las Vegas on Saturday. (Riley Snyder / Twitter)

https://twitter.com/RileySnyder/status/731548182061027328

As if the protocol for assigning delegates to presidential candidates wasn’t already confusing enough.

On Saturday, a Democratic convention held in Las Vegas with the aim of sorting out Nevada’s share of delegates became the site of intra-party confrontations, not to mention altercations featuring security detail from the Paris Hotel. The Washington Post put the day’s events in context:

Saturday’s raucous state Democratic convention in Nevada encapsulated a lot of the themes of the party’s 2016 election in a relatively short period: complex delegate math, inscrutable processes, allegations of deceit, fury — and a result that doesn’t do much of anything to shift the race’s eventual outcome.

Nevada’s process for sending delegates to the national convention in Philadelphia is among the most complex. When the state caucused in late February, the fourth state on the calendar for the Democratic Party, the results of that process favored Hillary Clinton. Twenty-three of the 35 total bound delegates were given out proportionally in the state’s four congressional districts, giving Clinton a delegate lead of 13 to 10. The results of the caucus suggested that after the state convention — which bound the state’s seven at-large delegates and five delegates who are elected officials or party leaders — Clinton would end up with a 20-to-15 lead over Bernie Sanders, with Clinton winning one more delegate from the at-large pool (4-to-3) and one more from the party-leader pool (3-to-2) than Sanders.

The people who attend the Democratic convention this weekend were chosen during voting in early April. At that point, Sanders out-organized Clinton, getting 2,124 people elected to the state convention (according to the tabulation at the always-essential delegate-tracking site the Green Papers) to Clinton’s 1,722. That suggested that voting at the state convention would flip: Sanders would win those 4-to-3 and 3-to-2 contests, giving him a 7-to-5 victory at the convention and making the state total 18-to-17 for Clinton instead of 20-to-15.

But that’s not what happened, as best as we can piece together.

Real Clear politics posted another account on Sunday about what did happen:

Adryenn Ashley posted several live videos (below) from inside the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas, where arcane secondary rounds of the delegate selection process of Nevada’s Democratic caucus erupted into chaos Saturday night. Bernie Sanders supporters demanded 64 rejected pro-Sanders delegates listed in a “minority report” prepared by their campaign be allowed to participate in selecting delegates for the national convention.

DNC leaders refused to reconsider their decision not to allow this, adjourned, and fled the building amid a chorus of boos; leaving hotel security and local police officers to handle the angry Sanders supporters.

Earlier in the day, the Sanders camp objected to several of their delegates being disqualified from voting for administrative reasons, and booed Sen. Barbara Boxer when she called for unity. “If you’re booing me, you’re booing Bernie Sanders,” she told them. “Go ahead, boo yourselves out of this election.”

A member of the rules committee called the act of disallowing votes for purely administrative reasons a violation of the spirit of the values of our nation.

Sanders supporter Rachel Avery posted video of the point in the evening when Paris Hotel security made it clear that the conference, as far as they were concerned, was officially over:

The ignored the vote, turned lights off, turn sound WAY up. Truly bullshit. Ignoring our voices. #TeamBernieNV pic.twitter.com/ojfPycA8Gf

— Rachel Avery (@rachelaveryy) May 14, 2016