Las Vegas- Democratic Party leaders hosted a press conference this afternoon at the Thomas and Mack Center on the campus of UNLV to outline their new plan to elect Clark County delegates for their party’s state convention May 17-18. Chairman John Hunt kicked off the press conference with a solemn mea culpa for the chaos Clark County Democrats experienced at the aborted Feb. 23 county convention.

“The turnout was unprecedented,” said Hunt, “ten times more than any county convention has ever held in Clark. I want to apologize to all Democrats who were inconvenienced or frustrated.”

Hunt outlined the negotiations that had taken place over the last week among the Clark County Party, the Nevada Democratic Party, the Democratic National Committee and its Delegate Selection Committee and the two remaining Democratic campaigns to reach a plan for what he called “a fair and equitable election so that we can seat our delegates at the state convention in Reno.”

According to the plan, over the next week and a half the Clark County party will use telephone, e-mail and mail contacts to reach every delegate that had been elected at the Jan. 19 precinct caucuses for a new vote to be held at the Thomas and Mack Center Apr. 12.

Delegates will have until Mar. 15 to complete a declaration of intent form to attend the new vote. Vacancies after Mar. 15 will be filled by the campaigns from among registered alternates.

Once these processes are complete, the party will send credentials to every identified delegate for them to take part in the Apr. 12 vote. Unlike the county convention, where voting was only supposed to take place for a few hours in the middle of the day, delegates will have from 8 a.m. until 7 p.m. to come to the Thomas and Mack Center to cast their votes.

With all of that to work through, there is still a lot of room for the campaigns to attempt to improve upon their Jan. 19 showings. Importantly, it will be up to the campaigns to organize an effective process for contacting alternates to ensure a full slate of convention delegates for themselves.

For example, N.Y. Sen. Hillary Clinton won 4,319 precinct delegates Jan. 19 and Ill. Sen. Barack Obama won 3,313. If only half of each campaign’s elected delegates fill out declaration of intent forms, then Clinton’s campaign will have only ten days to locate over two thousand registered alternates and to present their names for convention credentials. The process, therefore, will favor whichever campaign can get more of their supporters to fill out the initial declaration of intent forms or has the organizational strength to identify and turn out alternates.

The plan also calls for the creation of an executive committee of the county party to oversee the delegate notification and credentialing. The committee will consist of all the participants in today’s news conference: Hunt, state Sen. Steven Horsford representing the Obama campaign, Commissioner Rory Reid representing the Clinton campaign, Nevada Democratic Chair Sam Lieberman and former state Sen. Terry Care to act as a neutral arbitrator and settle any disputes.

“I am hoping that my job will be minimal,” said Care. “It is conceivable that there may be some disputes, but they’ve convinced me, as of this point, that any differences have been minor.”

During questioning afterward, Care was unwilling to state which candidate he had caucused for Jan. 19.

Aside from announcing the plans for a new vote, the press conference was largely an attempt to showcase Democratic unity during this long and eventful presidential nomination season.

“It’s really important,” said Reid, “that everybody involved in Democratic politics, everybody involved in this presidential campaigning and in the leadership of these campaigns is here holding hands, singing “Kumbaya,” telling you that this is the best way to resolve what happened Feb. 23.”