Sen. Bernie Sanders issued a statement Tuesday standing by his supporters, who are furiously claiming Sanders was cheated out of delegates at Nevada’s convention Saturday.
The statement came shortly after a meeting with Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, who called on Sanders to condemn the violence from his supporters. Outraged Sanders fans got so out of hand at the convention, with someone even throwing a chair, that security had to swoop in and shut down the event. Sanders did condemn that violence Tuesday but made the focus of his statement on how he was wronged:
At that convention the Democratic leadership used its power to prevent a fair and transparent process from taking place. Among other things:
- The chair of the convention announced that the convention rules passed on voice vote, when the vote was a clear no-vote. At the very least, the Chair should have allowed for a headcount.
- The chair allowed its Credentials Committee to en mass rule that 64 delegates were ineligible without offering an opportunity for 58 of them to be heard. That decision enabled the Clinton campaign to end up with a 30-vote majority.
- The chair refused to acknowledge any motions made from the floor or allow votes on them.
- The chair refused to accept any petitions for amendments to the rules that were properly submitted.
These are on top of failures at the precinct and county conventions including trying to depose and then threaten with arrest the Clark County convention credentials chair because she was operating too fairly.
The continued tension leaves front runner Hillary Clinton fighting a two front war against Sanders and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. The Nevada State Democratic Party issued a statement early Tuesday defending themselves and explaining how Sanders’ poor campaign organization cost him.
- Based on the county convention results, Bernie Sanders had 2,124 delegate slots to the State Convention and Hillary Clinton had 1,722 delegate slots to the State Convention.
- On Saturday at the State Convention, after all of the alternates were seated, Hillary Clinton filled 1,695 of her delegate slots and Bernie Sanders only filled 1,662 at the State Convention — giving Clinton a 33-delegate margin of victory.
- Clinton only had 27 delegate positions vacant on Saturday. Sanders left 462 vacant. Clinton filled 98 percent of her available delegate slots at the State Convention, and Sanders only filled 78 percent of his available delegate slots.
- In plain terms, the Clinton campaign organized and got nearly all of their delegates to the State Convention. The Sanders campaign did not.
The party went on to say the rules were consistent with previous conventions have been run, rebutting allegations they altered the rules to favor Clinton. They also responded to allegations that 64 of Sanders’ delegates were turned away. The group said actually only 8 attempted to register and the rest were ineligible because they either were not registered Democrats before the deadline or their personal information like address and date of birth could not be found. They allege their appeals to Sanders to correct the issue went unanswered.
It’s unfortunate that while we were making these efforts to ensure that we conducted a fair State Convention, the Sanders campaign was deliberately sharing misinformation about how the convention operates to get people riled up. And after starting this fire, they had no capacity — and no desire — to control their own supporters from hurling threats and insults and being disruptive to the proceedings. We were forced to conclude the State Convention at the Paris Las Vegas Hotel quickly because event security no longer had the capacity to control the unruly and unpredictable crowd.
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