The most significant, or at least time-consuming, discussion at today’s Democratic State Committee meeting revolved around rules for running for Senate district conference seats and electing delegates to the state convention. Mention was also made of national convention-related dates. Here is a unified timeline that I thought might be helpful. There will be trainings around the state for state and national caucuses as well.
January 18th – candidacy and pledge forms available for potential national convention delegates
January 22nd – deadline to notify party of intent to seek a conference seat
January 26th – DSC meeting in Framingham
January 27th – last day for city committees to apply for a waiver to hold all ward caucuses in single location
January 31st – last day to register as a Democrat for state convention caucuses
February 6th – earliest day for a state convention caucus to be held
February 10th – deadline to register as a Democrat for national convention caucuses
March 1st – presidential primary; state, town, and ward committee elections
March 14th – last day for towns and wards to elect attendees to district conferences
March 24th – last day to notify party of intent to run for CD delegate to national convention
March 26th – Senate district conferences held at either 10AM or 2PM for contested seats
April 1st – last day to notify party of intent to run for at-large national convention delegate
April 2nd – DSC meeting (location TBD); this is the reorganizational and add-on seats elections meeting
April 3rd – last day for a state convention caucus to be held
April 8th – deadline for paying state convention fee or applying for a waiver
April 9th – national convention caucuses by congressional district and candidate
May 7th – DSC meeting in Newton; DNC members, at-large and PLEO convention delegates to be elected, state convention add-on slates to be approved
June 4th – Democratic State Convention in Lowell
July 25th-28th – Democratic National Convention in Philly
Other items to note from today’s meeting included asking members to call legislators in support of the public accommodations bill and legislation to create a separate foreclosure court. There were also several proposed bylaw amendments read into the record for consideration by the bylaws committee to be reported out and acted upon at the January meeting. Finally, the state party website has been revamped (and yes, for those of you at the meeting and heard it was down it is now working again).
Thanks for posting this. I have two follow-up questions (since this is my first presidential year living in the state).
(1) What will be the focus of next year’s state convention? We have no state-wide (non-presidential) elections, so will it be like the one from September of this year?
(2) How do the national convention caucuses work?
There’s more information about the delegate selection process on the State Party Website: http://www.massdems.org/index.php/2016-democratic-national-convention
The short version is that the caucuses are done by Congressional District. Each CD has been allocated a number of delegates to the DNC, broken out by gender which will then be further apportioned by the results of the March 1st Presidential Primary. These delegates are typically pledged to a particular presidential candidate & are required to file with the party to indicate they are running for delegate (the March 24th deadline above).
Any registered Dem in the CD is eligible to attend, so candidates for delegate typically bring supporters. The caucuses can also last for several hours depending on the number of candidates & delegates to be selected.
Once every 12 years there is an even year convention with no nominations and 2016 is one of those years. Since it is in Lowell I have suggested arranging afternoon bus trips to canvass over the state line following the adjournment of the formal session.