<p>Howard Dean will not bend the party rules to grandfather in the disputed delegates from Michigan and Florida, the Democratic party chairman said in a statement today.</p>
<p>Instead, he put the state parties on notice: either they can wait and allow the credentials committee to decide whether to seat their delegates, or submit to a re-vote sanctioned under DNC rules. “We look forward to receiving their proposals should they decide to submit new delegate selection plans and will review those plans at that time,” he said in the statement.</p>
<p>Dean will make the rounds of the network morning news shows tomorrow to explain his reasoning.</p>
<p>The state parties better act quickly: they have to submit a new plan and run the contest before June 10.</p>
<p>Karen Thurman, the chair of the Florida Democratic Party, issued a statement late Wednesday that seemed to discount the possibility of a second primary.</p>
<p>Well the state parties are the ones that “spilled the milk” in the first place, so they are the ones that need to clean up the mess they [knowingly] made.</p>
<p>H and I were talking about this today. In both states, the Democratic voters knew before they voted that it wouldn’t really “count”. I’ve got to believe that this resulted in an unrepresentative sample of voters…certain voters probably didn’t make the effort to go vote?? I don’t know if it would yeild any different results, but those are pretty big states to leave dangling out there. I’ll be interested in what Dean proposes.</p>
<p>I am from MI. It is true that democrat voters were upset over the lack of a representative slate of candidates. Not only did many not bother to vote … but many who did, voted republican, instead. The primary was NOT valid. The will of the people of our state cannot be extrapolated from the results.</p>
<p>I am also from Michigan. Most people didn’t bother to vote. We were told it wouldn’t count, so why would we go? Those who bothered to, had a choice of voting Replubican, or for the one candidate on the Democratic ballot, or “uncommitted” which didn’t mean much to anybody. Who would bother to show up to a primary to vote uncommitted?</p>
<p>Which is why I get so annoyed that Clinton repeatedly claims to have won Michigan.</p>
<p>The party has painted itself into a corner where Florida and Michigan are concerned. There aren’t any easy solutions to this problem of counting the votes in those states. Certainly, it can’t be said that Hillary won those states “fair and square”.:rolleyes:</p>
<p>I also live in MI and I voted Republican in the primary, in part because they told us the primary really didn’t count and it was only a popularity contest. Now they are saying that if you didn’t vote in the Democratic primary, you won’t be allowed to vote in the re-vote.</p>
<p>One has to entertain the idea that a combination of Fl and Mi and the unaligned superdelegates will be the deciding factor in this 51/49 race. And if it goes against your candidate you will call “foul”. The process just gets sillier and sillier.</p>
<p>I am from Florida, and in spite of Howard Dean, I went to the polls thinking that my vote WOULD really count, because I thought that ultimately the party would agree to seat our delegates. Looks like I was wrong. I do agree that many people here did not go to the polls because it seemed pointless to them. Can we take the current results and have a fair outcome? I don’t think so. I don’t have any good solutions to offer, except perhaps a complete do-over, which isn’t going to happen.</p>
<p>The sad thing here, and what many people are forgetting, is that individual people are affected by this insane process. My vote doesn’t count. That is deeply disturbing to me, and I get even more upset when pundits say things like “Florida got what it deserved when it broke the party rules”. Maybe the politicians who made the decision to move the primary got what they deserved, but not the voters in my state or in Michigan.</p>
<p>As for Florida Governor Charlie Crist’s suggestion that we seat the delegates using the existing primary vote, which favors Hillary Clinton – my theory is that our Republican governor would like to see her as the Democratic nominee, because he (and many others) believes that McCain has a better chance of winning running against Clinton, rather than Obama. And there have been rumors that Crist would like to see himself as the 2nd banana on the McCain ticket. . .</p>
<p>The MI and Fl parties have really created a no-win situation. If you seat the delegates as it, you validate the rule violation, and you give Clinton an advantage she doesn’t deserve. But there are huge problems with a do-over too. My solution: take a Zogby poll of registered Democrats on a set date, and dole out the candidates based on the results.</p>
<p>I don’t know why the democrats wouldn’t allow and pay for a revote, hear my reasoning. Both Clinton and Obama (especially) have signed up tons of new voters and energized the democratic party. With Michigan being a huge swing state, and Florida to a lesser extent (if Obama is nominee) it only makes sense to charge up the base here. If you don’t revote, or at least do something to make the voters happy, it could very well backfire. I think in the end there will be a revote of some kind…</p>
<p>With the primaries going for Obama, I don’t think that Hillary would want another primary in MI and FL – she is happy with the way the votes came out. I live in Florida, and in no way should one penny of taxpayer funds be used for another election. Either keep it the way it is, or the two states get no delegates-- period. The funny thing is that both MI and FL would be so much more important IF they would have waited until later in the process, but who knew.</p>
<p>Florida voters also voted for a constitutional amendment to change our property taxes on the day of the primary. . Many people voted for that, even if they didn’t care about the primary.</p>
<p>Why not use his polls from the day BEFORE the Hew Hampshire primaries? Had the country done that, Hillary would have been gone after two primaries. </p>
<p>Or should we use the same polling methodology that made him predict John Kerry’s victory in the afternoon of the 2004 elections. </p>
<p>There is only one viable position to this problem and it involves the integrity of sticking to the rules. However, since this is still the party of Bill and Hillary Clinton, rules only matter when they benefit them. </p>
<p>This contest would be over if the Super Delegates showed an ounce of political courage and declared their position … now.</p>