"Senator Clinton wants the delegates seated according to the vote in January;"

THIS WRONG AND A MISREPRESENTATION.

Every principal she has is out there screaming for a revote (see Rendell, Corzine op-ed for yet another example of this).http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con tent/article/2008/03/10/AR2008031002243. html

I hope that Michigan does not follow a similar path. It is essential that accurate and fair voting takes place in both of these states, and neither achieved that under the first vote.

As a Michigan voter, I fully recognize that our vote was a sham at best. Maybe the results would end up the same, but because process was undoubtedly invalid, new results must established.

The claim that existing votes should stand is ridiculous no matter what, as process took the power out of the hands of the voter. That is a poor precedent no matter which candidate you support.

what's really going on here?  I'm sure 90% of the story is missing.

I go with Sen.Dodd idea. Split this thing in half and lets have them seated. That is it. Noone is left out.

and enough with what kos wants or thinks.. who even cares?  

Just posted a diary about how this was NOT a Republican scheme to disenfranchise Democrats:

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/3/12/5474 7/1696

with the current slate of delegates, at best Florida could get half its pledged and none of its super delegates seated.

At worst, it gets nothing.

They broke the rules and if they present the current slate, they should get NOTHING.

Only in the Democratic Party would we end up with the state democratic delegation and both presidential contenders arguing against enfranchisement of DEMOCRATIC VOTERS.

I'm an Obama supporter. I'm also a fan of democracy. There needs to be full and fair elections in Florida and Michigan - both contests (especially Michigan's) are undemocratic, likely unrepresentative, and unlikely to be seated.

If we're not getting a revote, let's take a cue from the GOP: half the Florida and Michigan delegations. If Michigan won't do a postal vote, throw all the Michigan "uncommitted" delegates to Obama. It probably won't affect Obama's delegate lead too much, and will end up being a swing of no more than 30 delegates - probably about what Clinton would have gained in full and fair elections between both states (tie in Michigan, win in Florida after Obama campaigning narrowed the gap).

It's still an awful solution, but it's better than ignoring the states entirely.

More likely what'll happen is that Obama will cinch the nomination in May or June, and some scheme which seats the delegations but which doesn't impact the outcome of the election will be worked out behind closed doors. Yuck.

We need to not let something like this happen again. It's bad for democracy, not to mention the millions of disenfranchised voters in both states.

It's in Hillary's interest to have a re-vote in Florida. Her only hope to win now is simple: the popular vote. Without a re-vote in Florida it is impossible for her to overtake Obama in which case he goes into the superdelegate battle with a lead in delegates and popular vote. That means it's over for her. Michigan doesn't matter. The most recent polling shows 41 - 41 Obama/Hillary and it couldn't make the kind of difference HC needs.

What a mess this whole thing is. The sad thing is, the later it gets in the calendar, the more unlikely it becomes that the actual voters of either state will have a say in it. Also, you know what they say about too many cooks spoiling the broth. There are so many interested parties in this one, it's difficult to imagine every one of them with (de facto) veto power will agree on anything.

I love the concept of vote-by-mail, but in reality, it's much more difficult to implement than those who advocate it as the solution for FL & MI think. Making sure everyone who should get a ballot does get one is one thing, making sure they all get collected . . . that's something all together different, and more difficult than you could imagine. It's not as simple as giving everyone an envelope with a PO Box address on it. There's also the necessity to have an adequate number of secure drop locations for late deciders. Logistics like this take time (and lots of it) to set up . . . and that's just one aspect of vote-by-mail.

From what I understand, the mail-in ballot revote would require legislative approval.  So, unless the republicans all band together and pass a law, the revote is dead.

Why they are opposing it makes little sense to me.  The Florida dems are being stubborn and arrogant.  They get what they deserve in August... nothing.  They had a second chance to NOT disenfranchise their voters, and they blew it big time!  

With regard to the diarist's question as to whether the House democrats have I say, the story I heard was that FL law does not allow mail-in contests, and the law would have to be changed at the state level to allow it (for the record, I'm an Oregonian, we do all our elections by mail, and the concerns about them are baseless.)

I was watching C-Span at couple of days ago when an elderly woman from FL called in.  She hadn't voted in the FL primary because she knew it wouldn't count.  It was the first Democratic primary she had ever missed. She was nearly in tears because she heard that now the primary is going to count, without her vote.

They either have to follow through with not counting the primary or they have to have a new primary.

I think the ultimate solution will be to seat half the pledged delegates and none of the super delegates from both states.

They have to be punished and the best way to do it is to mimnic the GOP's punishment for leapfrogging on pledged delegates and fully punish those most responsible for the debalce, the state's super delegates.

This is like Africa 3rd world politics.  Stupid crap.  IF both names were on the ballot in January, why can't we allow the results. I understand Michigan is a different situation. But this is why Florida will go GOP this fall because of crap like this.

I would like to see a revote, but I worry about fairness. People are affected by what statisticians call a confirmation bias; they seek out information and reasoning which confirms the choice they have already made. In the simplest possible terms, people tend not to change their minds because it implies they made a mistake.

The contests in MI and FL were not fair. There was no campaigning, which favored the candidate with name recognition. In MI, Clinton was the only one on the ballot. You can have a revote that doesn't share these defects, but there is no way to eliminate the unfair advantage Clinton would derive from confirmation bias on the part of those that voted for her in the beauty contests.

This is not to say Obama couldn't win, or that I'm dead set against a revote. I'm just not as enthusiastic about it as I might be. We'll see if it happens.

In retrospect -- how often does one say this sentence? -- the Republicans had the right idea. Strip half the delegates, the candidates still campaign, the votes still count, be there is a stiff penalty for breaking rules. It's too late now, but that would have been the better approach.

EMTP, was not fair in Florida?  What part of BOTH names were on the ballot do you not understand?  I understand the argument for Michigan.  Lets be straight up about this.  And if Obama keeps saying "I play by the rules."  Ok, so they shouldn't be seated?  What the hell?  Go ahead and GIVE JOHN MCCAIN FLORIDA this fall... Go ahead and have 48 states represented this summer at the convention.  Talk about 3rd world crap.

Let the state parties pick uncommitted delegates.  That would give those states the most power to cut deals.  The convention will be brokered no matter what. Neither Obama nor Clinton have enough support for consensus without going to negotiation.  I do not think it is bad for the party to have more say about the nominee and the MSM to have less say.  Plus there are a lot of factors that make some people's votes not count and others count a lot more.  This is not a one man-one vote process anyway.  This is about reaching consensus.

No matter what, the media enjoys conflict so they will do their best to stir up passions.

Kos is irrelevant.  His opinion on the matter is all based around his desires to see Obama win the nomination. He has lost all credibility with me.  He's sort of a Bill O'Reilly in the blogosphere.  Way too arrogant and one-sided for my blood.  I like honest debate.

As far as Florida and Michigan, I really hope that they figure something out.  If they do not have a revote of some flavor, I think it will spell disaster for the Democratic Party this fall.  I really do.  These two states are way too important electorally for us to write off.  "Rules" or no "rules".  This isn't some sort of DNC board-game, and those voters deserve representation-regardless of their states' decision to move the date of their primaries.  The big problem here is that if Florida and Michigan are allowed to vote it will LIKELY put Clinton nearing a tie with the popular vote- and will move her closer to Obama in delegates.  This is where all the controversy arrises.  As far as I'm concerned- the candidate on the side of NOT COUNTING Florida and Michigan will ultimately be on the losing side of the battle.  Joe and Jane America do not care about DNC Rules, and will see this whole fight as being unfair.  Clinton is on the winning side of the PR Battle in this fight.  

Since Dodd proposed a 50-50 split(unacceptable), and some Clinton supporters still want it as-is(unacceptable), why not split the difference between the two?

Edwards is no longer in the race, we could split his support between Clinton and Obama, and award them 58-42 accordingly.

Clinton got 55% in Michigan, while Not-Clinton got 45%, we could do a 52-48 split there too.

Multiply 185 by 58%, gives Clinton 107 delegates(roughly what she got from the first vote), and Obama 78.

Multiply 128 by 52%, gives Clinton 67 delegates(a slight drop from 73), and Obama 61.

Net gain for Clinton, +35 delegates.

Under the "seat the original vote" approach, she got +56(if we award the uncommitteds in MI to Obama) or +111(if the system is somehow gamed to award all the uncommitteds to Clinton)

Under the 50-50 split approach, obviously, she has no net gain, and neither does he.

If she accepts my proposed compromise, all Clinton has to do is beat Obama by 800,000 votes in the remaining 10 contests, and/or win about 120 more delegates than he does.  Simple, and, I think, fair.

Florida has run out of time to do a full primary re-vote, and there may be some issues with the mail-in proposal.  So, I think we may wind up with some version of my suggested compromise.

Florida may be an odd duck with respect to Republican versus Dem turnout due to the property tax measure on the ballot. Nothing fires up Republicans as much as the opportunity to vote against taxes. I remember reading discussions of  that at the time.

As an Obama supporter, I think that the re-vote is far more important and feasible in MI than FL for several reasons:

1. MI Dem party has organized and held a caucus as recently as 2004 and therefore presumably more experienced in organizing this sort of thing.

2. MI is smaller and therefore logisitcally easier to administer.

3. The results are more likely to change significantly in MI since Obama wasn't even on the ballot the first time and since the demographics are far more friendly to Obama than FL's.

4. Since Obama wasn't even on the ballot, there is more logical basis to claim that the original election was meaningless and unfair as well.

If there is at least a re-vote of some sort in MI, then (again, as an Obama supporter), I would say it would be fair to seat the FL delegation as per the Jan election.  MI, to me, is where the results are really unfairly tilted towards Clinton.  A FL revote, while possibly more fair, seems like a huge expensive exercise that would most likely just re-affirm the original results or something close to it (I think Obama could cut into her margin a little given a chance to campaign there in earnest, but not enough to make a significant difference in the deldgate allocation).

I don't see why the parties in FL and MI would oppose some type of re-vote.  The whole point of moving their dates forward was to garner more attention and influence, right?  Re-votes mean that they become huge priorities that get massive focus from the media and the campaigns.

With this kind of leadership and stupidity from the elites running the Florida Democratic Party, is it any wonder they are in a minority despite how poorly the republicans are governing?

Voters need to replace these hacks with better people.

This is a ridiculous attitude.  It's not about favoring Obama or Clinton, it's about making votes count, a core principle of the Democratic party (or it should be).

How bad is the Florida Democratic party?

1.  Their refusal to let the their own party members be heard in this critical nomination battle.

2.  Debbie Wasserman-Schulz' refusal to support challengers in FL-18, 21 and 25.

3.  Their delegation includes an impeached former judge.

They just don't get it.

From the Atlantic this morning:

The joint statement by House Democrats in Florida opposing Florida 2.0 represents a victory by the Obama campaign, which has, as a matter of tactics, tried to add a layer of uncertainty to the ongoing discussions between the state Democratic Party and the Democratic National Committee.

The statement comes as the state party is putting the final touches on draft language for a statewide mail-in primary; its officials and attorneys are working closely with lawyers for the DNC. (No formal agreement has been reached within the party to actually proceed with a re-vote.)

DNC officials stress that Howard Dean is as resolute as ever: he is not going to compromise and there is no formal mechanism even if both campaigns "agree" ... the only routes are the rules committee process or a rules-and-bylaws committee sanctioned re-vote.

Florida Democrats used to be frustrated. They're now panicked, feeling pressure from elected officials, activists, donors and candidates. They're fighting among themselves over who is to blame and there is no agreed upon end-game. Many believe that the Obama campaign is unnecessarily pressuring its supporters to throw up roadblocks

...

What worries Obama managers in Chicago is the timing: if Florida is seen as a real re-do, and if the media portrays it as a wide open contest, a clear Clinton victory would give her a big bounce of momentum right as the primary window closes.

A Snag For Proponents Of A Redo In Florida

So the Obama campaign is pulling out all the stops to disenfranchise the people of Florida and Michigan. Their strategy is very clear at this point.

is supporting Obama?

I believe this qualifies as a roadblock:

"Sen. Barack Obama's campaign is raising red flags about the idea of a revote in Florida to solve the mess over the state's delegates to the presidential nominating convention.

David Plouffle, campaign manager to Obama, noted that the lead advocate for a mail-in revote is Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, is a supporter of his opponent Sen. Hillary Clinton. Plouffle said any revote would need to get U.S. Justice Department approval..."

Link: http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_po litics/2008/03/obama-campaises.html

Justice Dept approval for a revote in a Democratic primary! Plouffle wants approval from BUSH's DOJ?

Hillary supporters would get off their high horse on this one.

If Florida was a big Obama state I guarantee they would not give a shit about disenfranchised voters.

.

Will Hillary supporters agree that the winner of the pledged delegates/popular vote must be the nominee?

If you won't, then essentially you support disenfranchisement of EVERY SINGLE VOTER in EVERY SINGLE STATE, which is what that would be. But somehow that's OKAY with Hillary despite being such an advocate for those poor Floridians.

A 50-50 split is an Orwellian solution, since it effectively neutralizes the Florida vote--no different than simply diallowing them. Typical kos.

This sounds like 2000 when Bush screwed Gore on the votes in Florida.I am a whole lot sick of the so-called politics this year.We have so many problems in this country,and all we hear is how Hillary is entitled to be president.She has been this way for over a year.Lets have a re-vote and if she wins then ok.