Florida To Do A Mail-In Revote?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Democrats, Florida, HillaryI guess that’s the solution they’re coming up with because the DNC won’t give them any money.
A solution to the growing controversy over Florida’s disputed Democratic primary may now be in the works. Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson tells NEWSWEEK he has spoken to the Florida Democratic Party about launching a soft-money fund-raising campaign for the benefit of a new mail-in primary, which would supercede the controversial Jan. 29 vote.Nelson, who spoke on the phone Friday afternoon as he was boarding a plane from Washington, D.C., to Jacksonville, Fla., for the weekend, was not forthcoming with specifics in terms of who will be approached for donations (as a senator, he is specifically forbidden from raising soft-money donations), or the timing of the new primary. The senator was, however, clearly frustrated over waiting for other people to fix the problem. “My job is clear,” Nelson says. “It’s to stand up for the right of Floridians to vote as intended.”
So Michigan may have caucuses and Florida may have a mail-in revote? I don’t think this is what Hillary had in mind when her camp started to agree with redoing these contests. Either way, this primary season is beyond screwed up. The DNC should be ashamed of themselves, as should Michigan and Florida.
And Dems wonder why Bush has been a two-term president?
Take a look people…this is your party.
This entry was posted on Friday, March 7th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Barack, Democrats, Florida, Hillary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 7th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
What exactly did the DNC do wrong?
March 7th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
I still put more blame on the egotists of Florida and Michigan than the DNC. Will any state go along with a realistic attempt to fix the broken primary/caucus system? Can a majority of them come up with a way to eliminate the sway of the unrepresentative states of Iowa and New Hampshire? I’m not sure anyone is desperate enough even after the mess this year has been.
March 7th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
What were the Florida dems supposed to do? The GOP-controlled state legislature decided to move the primary day. Why can’t every state vote on the same flippin’ day?
March 8th, 2008 at 3:26 am
Florida and Michigan are to blame for this mess, if they had played by the rules they would have been a big factor in the primary, but they screwed themselves over, now they need to fix their mess
March 8th, 2008 at 8:10 am
It’s not my party I’m an independent..however, things like this aren’t new apparently……”I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.”…..Will Rogers
March 8th, 2008 at 10:50 am
amyem,
For openers, the Florida Democrats could have refrained from co-sponsoring the legislation to move the primary. It might have moved anyway. But they would get more sympathy if they hadn’t been prominently involved in moving it.
March 8th, 2008 at 11:58 am
The bill to set the primary date in Florida passed the legislature near-unanimously (FL House unanimous, FL Senate two Republicans voted against). IOW, the GOP isn’t to blame. The FL and MI state Dem parties did NOT agree with the DNC’s decision to jump Nevada and SC up in line. It was forced on them.
The DNC was trying to gain advantage with the assumption that they could establish a front-runner and campaign without opposition while the GOP nominees beat each other up. Oops! Worked the other way around. It was a stupid thing for Dean/Reid and Company to do, and I predicted this exact problem when they did it 18 months ago. Repeatedly. Often. Noisily.
The FL and MI state parties were fully prepared to accept the customary and traditional half-delegates penalty for what they did, a rule that’s held for forty years. The full delegations normally get seated at the convention anyway, because the nominee is USUALLY settled before the convention and the extra delegates don’t make any difference, so the credentials committee can be generous and welcome them back into the fold.
But this time the DNC decided to REALLY retaliate against the upstarts and changed the penalty to an ALL-delegates penalty AFTER those primaries had been scheduled. And this time, those votes and delegates in those states DO make a difference. If they seat the delegates it can affect the outcome. If they don’t seat them they disenfrachise their own party base in two of the biggest states. No-win.
The DNC created this mess for themselves. The damage is already done–the eventual nominee will end up being picked in back-room horse-trading by those ultimate insiders, the superdelegates. Do-overs are just an attempt to obfuscate that. If they change the state outcomes, they destroy the overall credibility of the primaries. If they don’t change the outcomes, they leave the state parties triumphant and the DNC looking like weak spineless weenies.
No-win.