As unlikely as it sounds, there’s apparently some talk of having another Democratic primary in Florida and Michigan:
Democrats in Florida and Michigan are increasingly concerned that their primaries, held in January, will not factor into the nomination fight between Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. The Democratic National Committee stripped delegates from both states after they violated party rules by moving up their primary dates.
The states have two options. They can petition a party committee to reinstate the delegates, a decision that would go also before all of the delegates at the Democratic convention in August. Or the two states can, in essence, vote anew, by holding caucuses this spring and assigning the delegates to the winner.
Mrs. Clinton won the Florida and Michigan primaries, though she and her rivals did not actively campaign in either. Her camp is eager to hold onto the victories and fight for the delegates to be seated. What is more, Mrs. Clinton’s track record with caucuses is poor. Of the nine held so far, she has won one (Nevada) and Mr. Obama has won eight.
I think we’ll be hearing more about this.
February 10th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
I doubt there will be a FL revote. The stated cost of a new primary ($10 million) is simply too high. And all names were on the ballot when the primary was held. Whether any of those elected delegates get seated is a call I’m not prepared to make.
There could be a MI revote, however. Michigan’s ballot only had Hillary and “uncommitted”. Seating those delegates would be unfair to Obama since he wasn’t on the ballot. I could see MI having a caucus to make up for the invalid primary.
February 15th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
[...] I noted last week, there is an option here. Florida and Michigan can either take their chances and petition the [...]
February 22nd, 2008 at 3:27 pm
I’m a Florida Democrat who voted for Hillary. I am VERY strongly in favor of a re-vote. I think that it is OUTRAGEOUS that FL and MI have been disenfranchised.
Together, FL and MI come to a whopping 44 electoral votes. If they were one state, that would make them second only to CA (with 55). Who can FL and MI possibly be ignored while calling this an “election”?
The big price tag is a JOKE. Obama was just bragging about having raised $7 million in 2 days. Hillary raised $10 mil in a week. The DNC should also be in on it. After all, the DNC was the one who caused the mess in the first place.
Furthermore, ONE WORD from Almighty Obama at one of his rallies and there would be MORE than enough money to pay for a Florida re-vote. In fact, CAPS are probably not necessary, since it is not a campaign expense.
With her $2.5 billion wad, Oprah could pay for the election with her lunch money.
Sure, its RISKY for BOTH parties. But that is the way an ELECTION is supposed to be. Hillary won big the first time, this time she might win small or even lose.
On the other hand, its a risk for Almighty Obama because he could conceivably LOSE as big as he lost on Jan 29.
It would be something called an “election”, which would be a nice change from the abortion that is currently going on.
Or maybe we should just keep ignoring GIGANTIC potentially BLUE states like FL and MI and focus on Obama winning his string of MEANINGLESS red state caucuses.
Lets have an election and get it over with.
Without an election, and without seating FL, the Democratic Party can forget about FL. FL is leaning Republican anyway, and all of this Democratic disenfranchisement and boycotting has just made it much, much, much worse.