DNC official defends ‘complicated’ nomination process

A top Democratic National Committee official on Sunday defended the party’s nominating process, saying she wanted to clear up “a lot of rumors” about superdelegates.

{mosads}Patrice Taylor, the director of party affairs and delegate selection at the DNC, wrote in a post that the Democratic National Conventions reflect America’s “great diversity,” adding the process is “open and inclusive.”

“Over 30 years ago, the Democratic Party created the category of unpledged ‘super’ delegates. These are Democratic leaders like governors, members of Congress, and party officials,” she wrote.

“We ensure these leaders have a voice in our convention outside of the primary and caucus process: Unpledged delegates mean interested voters don’t have to run against elected officials to attend the Democratic National Convention. Ultimately, each state’s delegation is comprised of a diverse group of citizens like you and the Democratic leaders you have elected,” Taylor added.

She also wrote that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was not awarded more delegates than rival Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire “even though he won the popular vote.”

“The fact is that there were 24 pledged delegate votes at stake in New Hampshire’s First in the Nation primary on the Democratic side. Those 24 delegate votes were distributed according to the results of those elections, with Bernie Sanders winning 15 and Hillary Clinton winning 9,” she wrote.

Clinton and Sanders had the same number of expected delegates coming out of New Hampshire because Clinton had the support of six super delegates

Taylor noted that the 712 super delegates do not have more power or votes than regular delegates and only make up a fraction of the 4,763 total delegate votes.

She also wrote in the post that the Iowa caucuses were “not decided by coin tosses,” refuting widespread news reports.

“Seven coin flips were reported through the Iowa Democratic Party’s reporting app out of more than 1,700 simultaneous caucus events, with Bernie Sanders winning six and Hillary Clinton winning one,” Taylor wrote.

She added that the Iowa Democratic party did not “change the delegate vote in some precincts.”

“Because volunteers run each event, there were a handful of issues, as could be expected. However, because of the State Party’s months-long process of training volunteers, deploying new technology for reporting, and integration of campaign staff and volunteers, all of the results were triple checked. When the party found inadvertent reporting mistakes in a small number of precincts out of more than 1,700 caucuses, they corrected those mistakes,” she wrote.