Florida and Michigan
Mar 12th, 2008 at 8:55 pm by Susie
Wampum and Talk Left are among the few blog voices against disenfranchisement of the Florida and Michigan primary voters.
One political friend told me the Floridian Dems only voted yes on the early primary because 1) it was a poison-pill amendment to a bill that required audit trails on electronic voting machines and 2) that the DNC assured them not to worry, it would all be “worked out.” I’m still trying to document this.
In any event, I would think counting every vote is something we all can agree on.
From what I understand, it was attached to other voting legislation involving paper trails and so on.
Dems could either vote against electoral reform, or vote for invalidating Florida’s primaries.
Following the rules and not changing the rules mid-game is also important.
Addiitonally, making consequences matter is important, to disuade future problems of this sort. The delegates cannot be seated as-is. Either they don’t get seated, or they have a do-over of some sort.
You know, both the Democratic Party used to use “rules” to prevent women and minorities from even participating at the Convention. And, of course, the US government used “rules”, also known as “laws” to prevent those same groups from voting.
If it comes down to supporting voting rights over rules, just where do you fall, Spryboy?
I’ll accept a “re-do” if that’s the only way to enfranchise the MI and FLO voters; but we look like a freakin’ banana republic rather than the world’s oldest democracy when we demand voters revote otherwise fair elections.
Wampum and Talk Left are among the few blog voices against disenfranchisement of the Florida and Michigan primary voters.
actually, my impression is that most blogs on the left are for a redo of one form or another. are there really any blogs that are pro-disenfranchisement? who are they?
I’ll accept a “re-do” if that’s the only way to enfranchise the MI and FLO voters; but we look like a freakin’ banana republic rather than the world’s oldest democracy when we demand voters revote otherwise fair elections
actually, i think we look like a banana republic if we accept the current MI results. an election where only a single one of the candidates appears on the ballot and where the supporters of the other candidates are told their votes won’t count is very much like how elections take place in the 3rd world.
FL you can argue each way (i still think a redo is better, because the voters were told the delegates weren’t going to be seated before the election and because clinton broke the rule against campaigning that both obama and edwards honored), but the fact that only clinton even appeared on the MI ballot makes it really hard to argue that the results are worth much.
Snuzy, Obama was the one who ran an ad in Florida, plus talked to reporters after a fundraiser (the day after agreeing not to campaign.) I don’t support either candidate, but let’s get the fact straight, shall we? And while Obama didn’t campaign in Michigan, his surrogates were very vocal, even took out radio ads, urging voters to vote “uncommitted”, so that he could lay claim to the votes later. How is that not campaigning?
And Kos supports disenfranchisement. Wants to split the delegates down the middle, which, IMO, is pretty much voter fraud. You can’t take votes from one candidate and give them to another. If you go over to his site right now, a recommended diary yields hundreds of comments which do not support a revote. I’m sure there are others, but I tend to avoid the Kool Aid sites these days (it was against my better judgment that I even visited Kos, but I was looking for an old post and got sucked into the echo chamber.)
I don’t really understand why they took their names off the ballot in Mi and not in FL. Googling, cnn seems to say it’s to discredit HRC’s expected win there. I think it was a mistake for Edwards, anyway. He would have been strong in MI.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/09/michigan.primary/index.html
Votermom, in part it was to pander to Iowan voters (this is what I recall, but I called a friend yesterday from Iowa who works in politics, and it was the case.) And yes, Edwards (my guy as well) made a mistake - a long-standing rule of politics is you never take your name off the ballot if you’re still in the race.
Snuzy, Obama was the one who ran an ad in Florida, plus talked to reporters after a fundraiser (the day after agreeing not to campaign.) I don’t support either candidate, but let’s get the fact straight, shall we? And while Obama didn’t campaign in Michigan, his surrogates were very vocal, even took out radio ads, urging voters to vote “uncommitted”, so that he could lay claim to the votes later. How is that not campaigning?
well this just demonstrates that things get messy if you’re trying to decide what counts as “campaigning”, especially when almost anybody can be called a “surrogate”
as for the obama ads, what happened is that obama bought cable advertisements that ran nationally. the clinton campaign claimed this meant he was breaking his pledge not to campaign in florida because the ads were not blacked out when they ran on florida cable channels. that’s basically a campaign spin, you can buy their argument or not. but it isn’t really a matter of “accepting facts”
the reason i said clinton campaigned in FL is because she went to florida two days before the primary and actually campaigned.