The 2016 nom­i­nat­ing sea­son will end on a high note for pre­sump­tive Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee Hillary Clin­ton with a land­slide vic­to­ry in the Dis­trict of Columbi­a’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry, which was held today in our nation’s capital.

Of 85,949 total bal­lots cast, Hillary Clin­ton received 66,796 votes — a per­cent­age of 77.72%. Bernie Sanders received 17,550 votes, or 20.8%.

“We just won Wash­ing­ton, D.C.! Grate­ful to every­one who vot­ed,” tweet­ed Clin­ton’s cam­paign, attach­ing a pho­to of a beam­ing Clin­ton work­ing a rope line.

Sanders’ cam­paign has not com­ment­ed on the results.

The D.C. Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry was the very last con­test left on the cal­en­dar. Now that it has con­clud­ed, the cam­paigns of Hillary Clin­ton and Bernie Sanders will be focus­ing on get­ting ready for the convention.

The two can­di­dates are hav­ing a closed door meet­ing tonight to dis­cuss how to defeat Don­ald Trump and uni­fy the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party.

In advance of the meet­ing, Sanders held a press con­fer­ence call­ing for new lead­er­ship at the DNC (he wants Deb­bie Wasser­man Schultz out), a com­mit­ment to do away with “superdel­e­gates”, a com­mit­ment that open pri­maries be used in future pres­i­den­tial cycles, and a robust, pro­gres­sive platform.

It is worth not­ing that the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s cur­rent rules actu­al­ly allow for open pri­maries. It is up to each state and ter­ri­to­r­i­al par­ty to decide what method it would like to use to allo­cate its nation­al con­ven­tion delegates.

Each juris­dic­tion does things dif­fer­ent­ly. Some states, like Wis­con­sin, hold open pri­maries; some, like Ore­gon, hold closed pri­maries. Oth­ers, like Wash­ing­ton and Ida­ho, uti­lize cau­cus­es. Still oth­ers use con­ven­tions. The process that each juris­dic­tion uses is spelled out in its Del­e­gate Selec­tion and Affir­ma­tive Action Plan. The state or ter­ri­to­r­i­al par­ty drafts the plan, which iden­ti­fies the method by which del­e­gates will be allo­cat­ed, and sub­mits it to the DNC for ratification.

Any attempt to change nation­al par­ty rules to com­pel state and ter­ri­to­r­i­al par­ties to use a cer­tain method (e.g. open pri­maries) next time around is almost cer­tain to fail. Oppo­nents will point out it goes against the idea of a par­ty gov­erned from the bot­tom up, because it would deny state and ter­ri­to­r­i­al par­ties the free­dom to decide what sys­tem would work best for them in a giv­en cycle.

With respect to rules changes, Sanders would do well to focus on try­ing to get rid of so-called superdel­e­gates, which is prob­a­bly more achiev­able. There is a grow­ing con­sen­sus among the par­ty’s grass­roots that “superdel­e­gates” are unnec­es­sary, and even some in the par­ty estab­lish­ment share this view.

(For instance, Con­gress­man Adam Smith, one of Wash­ing­ton’s six Demo­c­ra­t­ic U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, has fre­quent­ly remarked that he does­n’t see a need for superdel­e­gates, and would be hap­py to do away with them.)

In about a month, the Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion will take place in Cleve­land, Ohio, fol­lowed a week lat­er by the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion in Philadel­phia, Penn­syl­va­nia. NPI will pro­vide live analy­sis of both con­ven­tions here on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate and on The Advo­cate’s sis­ter pub­li­ca­tion, In Brief.