Inching toward legitimate votes in MI, FL

The movement toward a "re-vote" in Michigan and Florida -- which would not actually be a "re-" anything, but rather the first legitimate primaries they've held, as I'll keep stubbornly pointing out -- appears to be steadily gaining momentum.

The Obama campaign now says it will "support whatever the DNC rules are, including a fair remedy to this problem." And the aforeblogged Hillary pivot toward accepting "re-votes," raised first by Terry McAuliffe and then by Ted Strickland, continued today as prominent Clinton supporter Ben Nelson added his voice to the "re-vote" chorus, and Clinton adviser Howard Wolfson signaled a possible opennness toward such a scenario: "Given how well we did in those states, were there to be a primary, we would have a good opportunity to do well again."

Wolfson then reiterated the campaign's official line: "Our position is that the voters of Michigan and Florida have spoken." But that position is entirely untenable once the "re-vote" option comes to be seen as a viable alternative, which appears to be happening.

The only card the Clintons have to play is the "disenfranchisement" card, and it's a powerful one. If the decision is between counting the delegates from January's rogue primaries and counting no delegates at all from Florida and Michigan, the Clinton team can get a lot of mileage out of their "count every vote" argument. (The intellectually correct rebuttal -- that these states broke the rules despite knowing the penalty, and should be duly punished for it -- is never going to gain any emotional traction with liberals.)

However, if we get to a point where everyone agrees that the voters' voices will be heard, and the only question is precisely how that will happen, the "disenfranchisement" argument is no longer relevant. Once the debate is between retroactively counting the rogue primary and holding a new primary in its stead, Clinton's current position would be exposed as a bogus, self-serving, intellectually bankrupt fraud, if she sticks with it. She'd basically be saying: "Every vote should be counted! But we shouldn't let them vote in a real election that actually counts! Instead, we should retroactively count the pre-emptively nullified election in which my opponent wasn't even on the ballot! That's the democratic solution!" No one will buy it.

Team Clinton presumably knows this. They also know that, ultimately, they're extremely likely to lose the Credentials Committee battle over the rogue delegates, if it comes to that (especially if they first sacrifice their "disenfranchisement" moral high ground by obstructing a "re-vote"). As such, I expect their pivot will continue.

Similarly, Team Obama knows that their argument against counting Michigan and Florida -- that we must respect the rules -- loses most of its force when the alternative is not a blatant violation of the rules, but rather a modest modification of the process that, in fact, the rules specifically permitted all along. (That last point is, for me, crucial. It's why I, unlike several of my commenters, support a "re-vote.") As such, I expect they'll continue to warm to a "re-vote" as well.

The next battle may be over what type of election to hold. Clinton, obviously, will push for a primary, and will dig in her heels and not accept caucuses as a viable alternative. Obama might be tempted to push for caucuses, but I suspect he'll realize that tack would make him look just as self-serving as Clinton has, and thus won't bother with it. Moreover, a primary in Michigan might actually benefit him, since he could very well win Michigan, and then he'd finally have a "big state" primary victory to his name.

Anyway, assuming that somebody comes up with a way to pay for a primary (apropos of which, Politico's Ben Smith raises the specter of a $5 million vote-by-mail primary in Florida, which would be considerably less than the $25 million estimates I've heard floating around), I think both candidates will ultimately accept it, and the only remaining question will be timing. Obama will want it sooner; Clinton, later. The mundane realities of election administration, combined with the fact that candidates actually have no formal role in any of thise (it's technically up to the state parties and the DNC), may ultimately mean that Hillary wins that battle, with either May 20 (Kentucky & Oregon) or June 3 (Montana & South Dakota) perhaps becoming Super Tuesday III.

I'll say this, though. It's in Obama's best interests to get this issue settled soon. Not necessarily to hold the actual primaries soon, mind you, just to reach a final decision about them, their scheduling, etc., soon. If the squabbling over this issue drags on until after March 29, when Michigan holds its Congressional District Conventions in which 36 of the 55 hypothetical "Uncommitted" delegates from the January 15 primary will be elected, and if Hillary is able to snag a sizeable chunk of them -- thus significantly increasing her effective delegate margin over Obama in the state -- she may be sorely tempted to dig in her heels and hope for the best when the Credentials Committee meets. So if I'm Obama, I want this thing resolved before March 29, just in case.

P.S. In comments earlier, Mike raised an objection to a Michigan "re-vote" that I hadn't considered:

As a registered voter in MI, I have to admit I'm going to be pissed off if there's a revote in the D race here but not the R race. MI has an open primary. I chose to vote in the R race in large part because it was well publicized that the D race would receive no delegates, and thus that the net effect of voting in that race was nothing. I'm far from the only one who did that. If there's a revote in just the D race, I will be unable to vote in it (as I cast a ballot in the R race when that was the only race which mattered). It will end up, effectively, telling people who paid attention to the rules of delegate seating that their decision to vote in the only race which would generate delegates was a bad idea, because enough people were upset with following the rules that there's a do-over for anyone who chose to vote in a meaningless contest or to not vote at all.

That's a legitimate gripe, but there's a simple solution to it: don't disallow the votes of people who voted in the earlier Republican primary! That might entail a minor procedural "rule change," but I think it would be entirely justified under the circumstances. (And to those who might object on grounds that such a solution would allow Republicans to meddle in the Dems' primary, well, that's already true in any other open-primary states between now and the end of the process, and has been true all along, but particularly ever since McCain effectively wrapped up the nomination. It's an objection to the concept of open primaries, not to this specific situation.)

Comments

[Alasdair]

At the risk of turning this into a Rules Geek discussion - how do you handle the stuation where some people would then be able to have voted in the Republican Primary *and* then vote in the new Democratic Primary ? Are they not then overenfranchised rather than disenfranchised ?

How do you 'correct' for the those Democrats, if any, who voted in the Republican Primary to mess up the Republican side ?

[Brendan Loy]

I just think you don't worry about it. You simply allow everyone to vote who would be eligible normally, regardless of whether they voted in an unrelated election six months earlier.

[Mike]

I think Alasdair has a legitimate point, Brendan, that while I am indeed the one who brought up the fact that I will feel cheated if there's a new D primary but not a new R one because I voted in the R one, I also feel it would be essentially unfair to allow those of us who voted in one to now also vote in the other. Overenfranchisement isn't much better than disenfranchisement.

Also, say all you want that it's the first legitimate primary. It's not. It's the first Democratic primary in MI this election cycle to generate delegates. The R primary already did so, which means you simply can't say it's the first legitimate vote this cycle across the board; you at least need to qualify it as the first legitimate Democratic vote this cycle. I would still argue that the fact that the state chose to move its vote earlier than the national party rules allowed does not make the previous vote illegitimate. It makes it largely meaningless in terms of picking a nominee, and it's entirely justified that the national party would enforce sanctions on states that disobeyed the national party's rules on when to hold it...but I don't feel that that inherently makes the election illegitimate.

[FzxGkJssFrk]

Ah, but then there's this.

[Andrew H]

It seems unfair to 'reward' these states with primaries that would be much more meaningful than if they had voted when the DNC ruled they should be voting. It's just not fair that they cheated the rules and still get rewarded for it.

[Brendan Loy]

I understand your point, Andrew, but to be clear, the DNC didn't "rule[] they should be voting" at any particular time. They merely ruled when they shouldn't be voting, namely, before February 5. But Michigan and Florida were free to pick any other date they wished, so long as it was between February 5 and June 10.

Moreover, so far as I know, there is no general requirement that states have to pick their primary date before voting begins elsewhere -- so in other words, it would have been theoretically possible under the rules for a state to say, back in December, "We're not sure yet when we're going to vote. We'll wait and see how the race looks at the end of February, and then we'll schedule our primary/caucus." They would have been perfectly within their rights to wait, then submit a delegate selection plan to DNC, and get in the game without an issue.

The key fact which sets this situation apart from that hypothetical is that, of course, Florida and Michigan held rogue primaries. But if you view those primaries as non-entities with regard to the nomination process, as I do, then an argument can be made that scheduling "re-votes" wouldn't really being "rewarding" for those meaningless rogue primaries, per se; rather, it'd be "rewarding" them only for waiting until early March to decide when to hold their real primaries, which is something that any state could have done, under the rules.

It's a tortured argument, I know. But I think it's also logically sound. :)

Another factor is there is nothing in the rules that requires the Democratic and Republican primaries and caucuses to be held on the same date in each state....and if you look back at the calendar you will note that several states had split elections. Also, as I recall, the reason the Florida Democrats held their primary so early was that there was going to be a vote on some initiative that the Democrats were concerned about that was to be held on the same day as the Republcan primary...so Democrats feared that there would be a low Democratic turnout that day if there was not also a Democratic primary on the same day.

[Ken]

In another thread I pointed out that Michigan and Florida might be entitled to up to 30% additional delegates if they hold their primaries or caucuses after May 1. This is because the rules of the Democratic convention give bonuses to states that hold later elections. (Indeed Pennsylvania gets 7 additional delegates because it is entitled to a 5% increase for holding its primary in April.) As to the 30% rule, it applies to those states that previously held their caucus or primary before May in 2004. (At the time of my previous post I was not certain when Mich. and Fl. held their 2004 elections.) It turns out that Mich held its 2004 caucus in Feb. 2004 and Florida its 2004 primary in Mar. 2004. Consequently, if Michigan and Florida choose their delegates after May 1 then they would presumably be eligible for a 30% increase in the number of pledged delegates at the convention.

DNC Call for 2008 Convention [see pages 1 and 2]

[Alasdair]

Elder Loy for President !

That way, he can fix the whole electoral mess !

I don't understand why they just don't lower the number of delegates necessary to win by subtracting the total number of delegates from MI and FL.

[Brendan Loy]

They already have.

(Why does everyone assume they haven't? You're the third or fourth person who has commented or e-mailed me along these lines.)

But what does that have to do with anything? That's not what the controversy is about.