Florida and Michigan must count

By Weekly Archive On Mar 19, 2008

In
the past, Democrats have often been accused of not being able to
organize a two-car funeral. This year, they proved it.

The
Democratic primary calendar is a mess. And there’s only one way to
fix it: Delegates from Florida and Michigan must be counted.

In
a moment, I’ll discuss how to make sure they’re counted. But first,
let’s look at where it all started: Iowa and New Hampshire. It makes
no sense to continue rewarding those states with the first caucus and
first primary in the nation every four years. They’re too small, too
white, and not at all representative of the American electorate at
large. The problem is, nobody has the guts to put Iowa and New
Hampshire later in the calendar, where they belong.

Instead,
the Democratic National Committee came up with a Mickey Mouse
compromise: keeping Iowa and New Hampshire in first place, then
squeezing Nevada and South Carolina in before more than 20 states
voted on Super Tuesday. But that didn’t satisfy Florida and Michigan.
In open defiance of DNC rules, they both moved their primaries up
before Feb. 5 — in response to which Chairman Howard Dean dropped
the hammer, refusing to seat both states at this summer’s national
convention.

At
first, nobody cared. After all, it was assumed, by convention time we
would all know the party nominee — and that nominee would certainly
allow delegates from Michigan and Florida to be counted. Oops! That
was before Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama got entangled in such a
tight race for delegates. With neither candidate now likely to reach
the magic number of 2,025 delegates necessary to secure the
nomination through the remaining primaries alone, Michigan and
Florida suddenly come back into play. Big time.

Any
discussion of the issue must start with the premise that some way
must be found to count delegates from both states. Michigan and
Florida are too big and too critical to be left on the sidelines.
Besides, there’s no way that Democrats, who accuse Republicans of not
counting all the votes in Florida in 2000, can choose a nominee
without counting all the votes in Florida in 2008.

How
to fix the Michigan-Florida mess? There are four possibilities: Count
the votes as cast in January; hold a caucus in each state; schedule a
mail-in vote; or hold a new primary. Only the last option makes
sense.

Sen.
Clinton would prefer awarding delegates from Michigan and Florida
according to votes originally cast. Of course. She won both states.
But Sen. Obama would never go along. He joined John Edwards and
others in taking his name off the Michigan ballot. He also argues
that he would have done better in Florida if he had campaigned there.

At
the same time, Clinton will never accept replacing two primaries with
two statewide caucuses, as the Obama team might prefer, because she
has lost every caucus state so far except Nevada.

The
mail-in ballot seems like an attractive option, until you realize
it’s never been done before in either state. It took 10 years for
Oregon, which holds a mail-only primary, to develop a foolproof
system. Does anyone really believe Florida or Michigan could pull it
off the first time around, with only a couple of weeks to get ready?

To
further complicate matters, the Florida Democratic Party has
suggested a modified mail ballot on June 3, where voters could either
vote by mail or in person, at one of only 50 voting stations across
the state, where normally there are thousands. To me, that combines
the worst of two worlds: compounding all the problems of ballots
getting lost in the mail with difficulties in finding an actual
polling place.

This
leaves the last and best alternative: Both states know how to hold
primaries, so schedule a new one in each state, sometime in June.
Make sure both candidates are on the ballot and let them battle it
out. This time, for real.

Unfortunately,
that’s the most expensive alternative, too. But there’s a ready
solution: Make the candidates pay for it. Obama raised $55 million in
February; Hillary, $35 million. Michigan and Florida are so important
to both candidates that their supporters will gladly write another
check to finance a new primary in each state.

You
see? Solving the problem of Michigan and Florida was easy. Now, what
are we going to do about those superdelegates?

Bill
Press is host of a nationally syndicated radio show and author of a
new book, "How
the Republicans Stole Religion."
You can hear "The Bill Press Show" at billpressshow.com.
His email address is: bill@billpress.com. His Web site is:
www.billpress.com.