“The primary has been good for our country,” he said. “We started out with six great candidates on the Democratic side — and seven counting Kucinich, because he added something to the campaign.”

Seven counting Kucinich?

http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Clinton/Maps/May30.html

Too bad was might just be nominating a weak GE candidate, one who will have garnered less votes than the stronger GE candidate. McGovern and Dukakis III in full immolation mode!

As for “we were discussing MI & FL, not the other states,” YOU brought up the other states in your comment of May 29th, 2008, at 12:45 pm, and again on May 30th, 2008, at 9:52 am.

Read, Mouse. You just might learn something.

Sen. Clinton is, according to today’s Washington Times.

“[Except] for the ads run by Obama in FL, no one campaigned in those states.”

No-one campaigned in Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina before their primaries/caucuses? That’s remarkable.

And except for the ads run by Obama in FL, no one campaigned in those states.

“A presidential candidate who campaigns in a state where the state party is in violation of the timing provisions of these rules, or where a primary or caucus is set by a state’s government on a date that violates the timing provisions of these rules, may not receive pledged delegates or delegate votes from that state.” (Rule 20 C.1.a)

That’ll throw a monkey wrench into the party machine, eh?

Your argument is a good one for punishing Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, but a bad one for letting Florida and Michigan seat all their delegates.

So, what would the delegate count look like if all five of those states were only to get half of their delegates seated?

As for him removing his name from the ballot, take a look at this for a possible explanation.

As for FL – HRC gets her 50%, BO gets his 33% and Edwards gets his 14%.

Mouse – try reading the links. Other states broke the rules and there were no penalties. And the penalty as per the DNC rules is supposed to be 50%. Have you bothered to read the challenges? As far as I can determine, neither FL nor MI are advocating 100%.

No-one has a right to vote in the primaries. (We don’t even have the right to vote for President.) The parties can choose their candidates in any way they see fit.

JeffCon – the Republican-controlled FL legislature made the call there and set the date, knowing full well that both parties’ primaries would result in sanctions. The Democrats couldn’t do anything about it. If you look at the FL Democratic Party website, you will see that information, along with the fact that they attached the date to a bill for paper verified voting. As I said before, the FL DP encouraged people to vote (thus the turnout records) so I disagree, for FL at least, that those votes didn’t represent the electorate. (Besides – how did you make that argument with a straight face, given the undemocratic nature of the caucuses?)

Doug – yes it matters. I think I was pretty clear on that in my comment at 12:45 as to why.

Bryus – I think it is a bit of a stretch to say that the uncommitted votes were against Hillary when both the Edwards and Obama campaigns encouraged people to vote uncommitted. Remember, everyone was still in the race at the time. In fact, the only two names not on the ballot were Obama and Edwards. There was a lot of posturing going on amongst the candidates at the time and almost all of them said they were going to remove their names from the ballot but only those two did.

As for the voters in FL/MI not hearing from the candidates – again, I think that is a stretch. Newspapers everywhere wrote about the campaigns – have been doing so for months leading up to the primaries. So the information was there.

I can’t speak for the details of what happened in MI but in FL, given the efforts of the FL DP to turn out the vote, I think you’d be hard-pressed to make the case that the voters didn’t participate because they didn’t think their vote would count.

The conditions at the time left left open the possibility that people did not vote because they hadn’t heard from all the candidates, or they didn’t think their vote would count. How many voters don’t have access to cable/satellite channels or the internet, it’s pretty arrogant to assume they all do.

In Michigan they didn’t even have a name on the ballot to vote for. As for the “uncommitted votes” those are votes against Hillary, not for any candidate. Any attempt to hand them out is pure speculation.

Does it really matter what the Rules and Bylaws Committee decides at this point ?

Frankly, the result will be the same whether they seat none of the delegates, all of the delegates, or only half of the delegates:

http://tinyurl.com/5yrxg7

Florida and Michigan both have access to all major forms of communication. Despite candidates not actively campaigning there, the voters were not without avenues to educate themselves on the candidates and their positions. There were numerous televised debates. If nothing else the voters there could have just watched C-SPAN to get the same effect of live campaigning.

Therefore, I don’t see how you say it is impossible to reflect the TRUE intentions of voters in those states. They had an election just like elections in any other state. Did the 2006 election in Virginia not reflect the TRUE intentions of Virginia voters? At a point in time, those primaries most certainly reflected the intentions of the primary voters there. Let me reiterate point in time, because if you are referring to sentiments today; of course, people’s opinions change based on new information.

I wonder why there has been no press on those three states breaking the rules? As an aside, I have never understood why they think they have the exclusive right to go first. What makes them any more fit or representative than any other state? Yet, they have an undue influence on who the candidate will be.

I find it offensive that people’s votes aren’t being counted, especially in the Democratic party, the party that actually represents the people. That, combined with the whole super delegate concept just remind me of the kind of shenanigans that the Republicans like to pull.

However, I don’t think it’s right to count the delegates when the elections were flawed. The candidates agreed not to campaign there and most took their names off the ballot in MI. It’s impossible to reflect the TRUE intention of the voters in those states given the results. Voters didn’t have the opportunity to vote for all the candidates.

I don’t think there is any “right” solution, but I also don’t think seating them is fair.

Governor Timothy M. Kaine issued a proclamation on May 16, 2008, summoning the members of the General Assembly to meet in special session at noon on Monday June 23, 2008, for the purpose of considering legislation to address the transportation needs of the Commonwealth.

Too bad the judgeships weren’t in there

Here is a pretty good roundup I found by doing a quick Google search. It includes the references to the documents and shows that, in addition to MI & FL, the rules were broken by IA, NH & SC. And it also discusses the 50% penalty.

You may be being objective based on the information you have, but the information you have is incomplete.

Scott – FL Dems encouraged turnout, on the belief that they would get their delegates seated. I don’t know exactly what MI Dems did.

It would have been truly impressive to see record turnouts more in line with the record turnouts we’ve seen all across the country in the later primary states. We clearly need to change the system, for though I do not want the rules-breakers to get fully seated as voting delegations; I also do NOT agree with the policy of giving Iowa and New Hampshire an unfair advantage for setting tone so early. It is a little frustrating that in most elections the primary is over long before we get to vote.

What other states broke the rules? I haven’t heard of any others.

Also, what rules did the RBC break?

I am being objective with the information I have. Are there any factual errors in my statements? Everyone knew the rules and penalties beforehand and that FL and MI chose to break them anyway.

As long as we’re patiently explaining things: Hillary leaves FL with a +19 delegate margin assuming for a 50% cut. Obama is up by more than 200 delegates. 19 < 200. We’ve had a lot of blah blah blah recently for something that doesn’t matter. Just give Hillary what she wants, she’s not going to win anyway.

Further, FL & MI weren’t the only states to break the rules, yet they are the only ones being penalized. Talk about being arbitrary! Are you even aware that the RBC violated the party plan by stripping those two states of their delegates?

Try looking at things a little more objectively.

I have no doubt she would argue just as strongly in the other direction if she was in the lead. Any compromise on this will make the Democratic Party look like they make decisions in a random an arbitrary way. I think we’ve already had enough of that with the Republicans in charge. I’d like to see better from the Democrats.