Irony of Ironies: DNC Suggests Seating Half of MI and FL Delegations

Remember back to 2000 and the Democrats demand to count every vote? Well, the DNC seems to have dropped that concept down the memory hole, because doing so might result in an outcome they choose to refuse.

Frankly, I find this funny regardless of how it turns out. The DNC is deciding how to change the rules it set for itself, and will alienate a significant portion of its delegates and voters no matter how they decide.

They put themselves in this position by declaring that Florida and Michigan would lose all their delegates for moving their primaries ahead of February 5. The states had the audacity to decide that they're the ones who make the decision on when to hold primaries, not the political parties themselves.

Now, such decisions will help shape what happens going into the DNC Convention in Denver, and a partial seating would help Obama, since it may keep Clinton from claiming a majority of the popular vote.

Thanks Howard Dean for giving bloggers and pundits so much to write about. And pass the popcorn.

Dean Urges Do-Over Contests in Fla, Mich

WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean urged Florida and Michigan party officials to come up with plans to repeat their presidential nominating contests so that their delegates can be counted.
"All they have to do is come before us with rules that fit into what they agreed to a year and a half ago, and then they'll be seated," Dean said during a round of interviews Thursday on network and cable TV news programs.

The two state parties will have to find the funds to pay for new contests without help from the national party, Dean said.

"We can't afford to do that. That's not our problem. We need our money to win the presidential race," he said.

Officials in Michigan and Florida are showing renewed interest in holding repeat presidential nominating contests so that their votes will count in the epic Democratic campaign.

The Michigan governor, top officials in Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign, and Florida's state party chair all are now saying they would consider holding a sort of do-over contest by June. That's a change from the previous insistence from officials in both states that the primaries they held in January should determine how their delegates are allocated.

Clinton won both contests, but the results were meaningless because the elections violated national party rules.

The Democratic National Committee stripped both states of all delegates for holding the primaries too early, and all Democratic candidates—including Clinton and rival Barack Obama—agreed not to campaign in either state. Obama's name wasn't even on the Michigan ballot.

Florida and Michigan moved up their dates to protest the party's decision to allow Iowa and New Hampshire to go first, followed by South Carolina and Nevada, giving them a disproportionate influence on the presidential selection process.

But no one predicted the race would still be very close at this point in the year.

"The rules were set a year and a half ago," Dean said. "Florida and Michigan voted for them, then decided that they didn't need to abide by the rules. Well, when you are in a contest you do need to abide by the rules. Everybody has to play by the rules out of respect for both campaigns and the other 48 states."

Personally, I thing the Florida vote should count as is. All of the candidates names were on the ballot and neither candidate campaigned there. To call a "do-over" in Florida is not right. In Michigan, however, they should redo the election, as Obama's name was not on the ballot.

I believe it is unfair for the party to take away the state's delegates and not seat them. The states, not the party, should make the rules for their own elections. If the party is not satisfied with the rules the state makes, they can withhold funding and support. To not seat the delegates disenfranchises the voters, without any recourse. There is something wholly un-American about not allowing people's votes to count in elections.

Resonance

There is great resonance with the idea of voter disenfranchisement, especially in Florida. So, when Howard Dean and the DNC says that they may keep Florida's delegates from being counted towards the vote to determine the Democratic party candidate, Florida officials aren't taking it lying down.

The Democratic National Committee voted Saturday to strip Florida of all its presidential convention delegates, threatening to leave the state without a voice in choosing the party's 2008 nominee, unless it delays the date of its primary election.

The ultimatum marks party leaders' most drastic attempt yet to impose order among states that have been trying to elbow their balloting closer to the front of the election cycle. Three months ago, Florida controversially set its primary for Jan. 29.

The DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee voted overwhelmingly to give Florida's party 30 days to reschedule -- to Feb. 5 at the earliest -- or risk losing accreditation for its 210 delegates to the nominating convention next summer in Denver.

A refusal to seat delegates from the nation's fourth most populous state could set the stage for floor fights and a public spectacle at a convention normally choreographed to show party unity.

There was a time when the process was all so simple. You knew you had New Hampshire and Iowa leading the way in late February, and several weeks later, Super Tuesday would come along and states like New York and New Jersey would come after that. In that time, the number of votes cast for candidates would see several eliminated along the way, and the die was cast with the likely nominee selected before the first votes were cast in New Jersey or New York.

No longer.

Now, there's a mad scramble to make other states relevant, so there's a game of chicken going on. States are leapfrogging over each other to remain relevant, despite rules setting the order:

Party rules ban states other than Iowa (Jan. 14), Nevada (Jan. 19), New Hampshire (Jan. 22) and South Carolina (Jan. 29) from holding their 2008 presidential primaries before Feb. 5. The calendar was designed to protect Iowa's and New Hampshire's clout in being first to choose a nominee. Nevada and South Carolina were added to provide racial and economic diversity.

If election trends of the past three decades continue, both Democrats and Republicans are likely to choose their candidates long before the 2008 national conventions are held in Denver and Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn.

So while Florida Democrats may lose their delegate votes, they could have a greater influence on the presidential race by showing the early preferences of Florida, a donor-laden swing state with 27 electoral votes.

The DNC and RNC are both trying to keep state officials from messing with the schedules, and Dean is adamant about trying to maintain that order, but I really wonder what Dean and the DNC would do if Florida refuses.

They can't exactly withhold the delegates, as it would indeed restrain Florida voters in their ability to select a candidate. The irony that Democrats would seek to do this in light of what happened in 2000 is striking.

Having resided in both New York and New Jersey, I know that turnouts have generally been light for the primaries because the candidates have been winnowed and selected well before I got a chance to cast a ballot. It's a situation that those states want to correct. If Florida doesn't back down, they're going to present a quandary for DNC officials who want to protect their schedule.