The Nevada State Democratic Party Executive Board (E-Board) voted last week to approve a set of draconian convention rules that are in direct contradiction to the values of the Democratic Party. We have since found out that because the Rules Committee didn’t have a quorum to pass these rules, they were approved illegitimately. While we go through the process of getting the executive board to approve a proper set of rules, we need to put the pressure on the E-board to not attempt to re-pass the same rules they tried to pass last week.

The Democratic Party is supposed to be controlled by the democratic voters through the convention process, not by a minority of power brokers. But the convention rules voted on by the State Party last week are designed to concentrate all the power in the current party chair, and ensure that the voters and delegates have the least amount of influence on the party possible.

Last week Roberta Lange, the Chair of the NV Democratic Party, pushed through a set of rules that:

Put her in charge of the state convention without a vote
Give her the power to appoint every officer who interprets and enforces the rules
Give her the power to appoint every member of the committees who count the votes and decide which delegates are registered, and;
Give her the power to have absolute authority to decide which motions to recognize, who may speak, and to decide who the winner is in any voice vote.

If this sounds like a dictatorship to you, you're not alone.

Further, the rules make talking and any sort of perceived protest at the convention punishable by permanent removal of the delegate (at the chair's sole discretion), allowing her to actually remove delegates of her choice. It appears we are not even allowed to bring placards or signs that read Hillary or Bernie (or anything) into the convention space. Finally, these rules allow the convention business to start before most delegates will have been able to register, and to start having votes while the majority of delegates aren't even in the door yet.

These rules were rushed through the Executive Board this past Thursday night, without being approved by a majority of the rules committee. A vote was rushed through and the public did not hear about the rule changes; presumably this happened so that the Executive Board would not have time to fully examine the rules. Only two members stood up to Roberta Lange and opposed the rules – Erin Bilbray and Hawah Safa Ahmad. The remaining members did not stand up and oppose it, but we hope that they will reconsider once they understand the full import of these rules.

A full account of how un democratic these rules are, with the rules spelled out, the problems, and the proposed solutions can be found {here}. We encourage everyone to examine these just for the sake of seeing exactly how biased the rules are as written and to understand how bad it it will be if these rules are approved.

A representative of the Rules Committee has already pointed out to Roberta Lange that these rules were not legitimately passed, and multiple parties have asked Ms. Lange for the meeting minutes where the rules were voted on, but she has refused to provide them.