C. Order of Business: The order of business for the Democratic National Convention shall be as provided in these rules and in any special order of business adopted under Section D. of these rules. The Chair of the Convention may, at appropriate times, interrupt the order of business provided for in these rules for introductions, announcements, addresses, presentations, resolutions of tribute and appreciation, or remarks appropriate to the business of the Convention.

7. Roll Call for Presidential Candidate:

a. After nominations for presidential candidates have closed, the Convention shall proceed to a roll call vote by states on the selection of the presidential candidate. The roll call voting shall follow the alphabetical order of the states with the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico and the territories treated as states for the purpose of the alphabetical roll call.

b. A majority vote of the Convention’s delegates shall be required to nominate the presidential candidate.

c. Delegates may vote for the candidate of their choice whether or not the name of such candidate was placed in nomination. Any vote cast other than a vote for a presidential candidate meeting the requirements of Article VI of this Call and Rule 12.K. of the 2016 Delegate Selection Rules shall be considered a vote for “Present.”

d. Balloting will continue until a nominee is selected. Upon selection, balloting may be temporarily suspended, provided that the balloting shall continue at a time certain determined by the Convention Chair, until all states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the territories shall publically deliver their vote prior to the nominee’s acceptance speech. The nominee shall become the candidate of the Democratic Party of the United States for the Office of President upon the conclusion of his or her acceptance speech.

I. Distribution of Delegate Votes
The distribution of votes, delegates and alternates to the 2016 Democratic National Convention shall be in accordance with the following:

A. The number of Convention votes for delegates to the Convention shall be as set forth in the compilation included in this resolution and determined as provided in paragraphs B, C, D, E, F, G, and H1.

B. A base of 3,200 delegate votes is distributed among the 50 states and the District of Columbia according to a formula giving equal weight to the sum of the vote for the Democratic candidates in the three (3) most recent presidential elections and to population by electoral vote. The formula is expressed mathematically as follows:

F. Unpledged votes shall be allocated to each delegation to accommodate the members of the Democratic National Committee from that state or territory in which they legally reside. The size of such a member’s vote (i.e., whole or fractional) shall be the same size as that which he or she is allowed to cast at meetings of the Democratic National Committee. Additional unpledged delegates shall be allocated for other officers serving in three (3) positions created by the Democratic National Committee in accordance with Article 3, Section 1.e. of the Charter of the Democratic Party of the United States.

G. Unpledged votes shall be allocated to provide for the Democratic President, the Democratic Vice President, and all former Democratic Presidents, all former Democratic Vice Presidents, all former Democratic Leaders of the United States Senate, all former Democratic Speakers of the United States House of Representatives and Democratic Minority Leaders, as applicable, and all former Chairpersons of the Democratic National Committee. Such delegates shall be seated with the state delegations from the state in which they have their voting residences.

The “Efficiency Gap”

Stephanopoulos and McGhee’s central insight is that gerrymanders operate by forcing the disadvantaged party to “waste” votes. Some voters are shunted into districts where their party’s candidate has no chance of winning, a process known as “cracking.” Others are crammed into districts that so overwhelmingly favor their party’s candidate that casting an additional ballot for that candidate merely adds padding to a foregone conclusion, a process known as “packing.” “A gerrymander,” Stephanopoulos and McGhee write, “is simply a district plan that results in one party wasting many more votes than its adversary.”

To sniff out possibly gerrymanders, Stephanopoulos and McGhee begin by counting each party’s “wasted” votes. As the three-judge panel hearing the Whitford case explained in a recent opinion, a wasted vote occurs when a voter either casts a ballot “for a candidate who lost the election” (suggesting that the voter was targeted by cracking), or if they cast a ballot “for the winning candidate, but in excess of what the candidate needed to win” (suggesting that the voter was packed).

As Stephanopoulos and McGhee note, some number of wasted votes are inevitable in elections involving single-member districts. But a fair map should produce roughly equal numbers of wasted votes for both parties. To determine which maps diverge too far from the ideal, the two scholars offer a metric they call the “efficiency gap,” which is calculated by taking the difference of the two parties’ wasted votes and then dividing it by the total number of votes cast. The plaintiffs in Whitford (speaking through a team of lawyers that includes Stephanopoulos) offer an example of how to calculate this figure in their complaint:

Suppose, for example, that there are five districts in a plan with 100 voters each. Suppose also that Party A wins three of the districts by a margin of 60 votes to 40, and that Party B wins two of them by a margin of 80 votes to 20. Then Party A wastes 10 votes in each of the three districts it wins and 20 votes in each of the two districts it loses, adding up to 70 wasted votes. Likewise, Party B wastes 30 votes in each of the two districts it wins and 40 votes in each of the three districts it loses, adding up to 180 wasted votes. The difference between the parties’ respective wasted votes is 110, which, when divided by 500 total votes, yields an efficiency gap of 22% in favor of Party A.

An efficiency gap of more than 7 percent, these plaintiffs claim, is indicative of a partisan gerrymander. When combined with evidence that the state acted intentionally to give one party an advantage, they argue that courts should presume that a map that produces such a high efficiency gap is an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.

1) MYTH: Statewide popular votes precisely determine the delegate split. This myth essentially goes like this: whoever wins the popular vote should’ve received a proportional number of overall delegates, even though that’s not exactly how delegates are distributed. Proportional, yes. But not according to statewide results. It’s like the difference between the electoral vote and the popular vote in the general.

So, contrary to the conspiracy theory that Hillary and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz are “rigging” the primaries against Bernie by awarding Hillary with delegates she didn’t earn, the rules for splitting delegates were approved well in advance of the primary season. In fact, there was plenty of time for Bernie Sanders and his advisers to familiarize themselves with the rules since the latest version was approved by the DNC back in August of 2014.

3) MYTH: Superdelegates are evil. We’ve all seen the garment rending. The superdelegates, they say, are anti-democratic weapons of the establishment — except when the superdelegates can be exploited to Bernie’s advantage. First, let’s get this out of the way: Bernie Sanders is a superdelegate. That not only means he’s part of the establishment, it also means he’s part of the anti-democratic establishment plot. Bernie supporters have made lots of noise about how the superdelegates will swing to Bernie when they finally come around to recognizing his momentum. Likewise, as we’ve already discussed here, the superdelegates should only support whomever won their state. So, given how Bernie only has 31 superdelegates, he’d have to pick off Hillary’s superdelegates ostensibly from states where Hillary won the popular vote. Put another way, you can’t be revolutionarily opposed to the establishment while also manipulating it to your candidate’s advantage.

And regarding the anti-democratic thing, the superdelegates have never once overruled the candidate with a pledged delegate majority.

The old political-science models, Team Sanders argues, are of limited use. Indeed, they’re stale and out of date, failing to reflect the kind of massive progressive turnout that Bernie Sanders – and only Bernie Sanders – can create.

This isn’t the entirety of Sanders’ pitch, but it’s a key pillar: the Vermont senator will boost turnout, which will propel him and Democratic candidates up and down the ballot to victory.