Florida and Michigan “do-over” Elections Not Likely
After a series of discussions and proposals about holding “do-over” elections in Florida and Michigan, it now appears highly unlikely that any “do-overs” will happen.
Link to Yahoo News summary: Michigan delegate split debated
For more background, see these previous Election Referee posts:
Yes, let’s have a “do-over” for Florida and Michigan
A Quick Guide to the Democratic Party Rule Book
Referee whistle: against the Democratic National Committee, illegal block, 10 yards
As I have stated before, this Florida/Michigan mess reflects poorly on the Democratic Party. We have seen much finger-pointing as people blame the state parties, the Republican-controlled Florida legislature, and the Democratic National Committee, especially the party chairperson, Howard Dean.
Ultimately, the Democratic Party needs to find an acceptable solution to this major problem. I will continue to criticize the party leadership for allowing this mess to happen in the first place, and then failing to solve it much earlier. Disenfranchising the voters in Michigan and Florida is simply wrong on principle and very dumb politically. It is now too late for any solution that will please the vast majority of Democrats.
Loading …As this controversy stands now, Florida’s 210 delegates and Michigan’s 156 delegates will be excluded from the Democratic Party National Convention, which officially determines who will be the party’s presidential nominee. Democrats generally agree that the party needs to include all delegates from these states. The issue is who are the delegates, specifically how many Clinton delegates and how many Obama delegates.
The Clinton and Obama campaigns have offered proposals to find a way to seat delegates from both states. Hillary Clinton suggests allowing the previous primaries to count, even though voters were told those elections would not count. She has also proposed do-over elections, but this has run into several obstacles. Paying for “do-over” elections is one obstacle.
The Obama campaign points out perhaps the main obstacle, which is complication and questions of legitimacy. If you hold do-over elections, do you allow people who voted in the Republican primaries to vote again? If the answer is “No”, then you are excluding Democrats who voted in the Republican primaries because they knew their own Democratic primary wouldn’t count. If the answer is “Yes”, then you open the floodgates for Republicans to have a major say in the Democratic Party’s decision.
The Obama campaign is proposing that both Florida and Michigan send their total number of delegates to the convention, and to split the numbers evenly between Clinton and Obama supporters. The Clinton campaign objects to this proposal because they believe that Clinton would gain a delegate advantage in both states if legitimate primaries were held. Poll numbers suggest this is probably true.
Some have even suggested that the Democratic Party base the delegate allocations on cumulative polling from multiple polling agencies.
One earlier proposal was to have a “mail in primary” for Florida voters. The Florida Democratic party shot this down, again because of potential problems of complication and legitimacy. Florida election officials did not want another voting mess on their hands. The 2000 Bush vs. Gore debacle in Florida is still too much of a recent bad memory.
Given the near 50-50 divide among Democrats supporting Clinton and Obama, this Florida/Michigan mess further complicates prospects of Democratic Party unity. On top of all the political division, the party cannot even agree on fair rules to give all voters a voice in this historic decision for the party’s 2008 presidential nominee.
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