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March 6, 2008

I commented on the "ABC/Facebook Politics" debate a few weeks ago on the Florida/Michigan issue. Someone had asked something to the effect of "Is it fair to victimize the Florida/Michigan voters", my response ( reposted below ) is that calling the voters victimized is a huge oversimplification of the situation.

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Voters in both states were told before the elections that the contests were deemed illegitimate and votes would not be counted. The issue at hand isn't the invalidation of valid votes - it is the validation of invalid votes. Voters were told in very plain language, "Your votes will not count." "Your votes will be invalid."

With that information coming directly from the Democratic Leadership, many people specifically decided not to vote. Again, I reiterate-- before the election, the contest was deemed illegitimate and people were specifically told that votes would not be allowed to impact the national results -- so people stayed home.

You can see proof of that in the voting patterns. About 750,000 Floridians voted in the 2004 Democratic primary; 1.7M voted in the 2008 Primary -- a 2.27 multiplier. That's a remarkable voter turnout and improvement on first look... but many other states received 4x and 5x multipliers on their voter turnouts from 2004. Researchers using regression analysis have suggested that somewhere between 2.3M and 3.1M Floridians would have voted in a primary that was known to be fully valid.

With that said, forget about the issues of 'fairness' to the candidates and campaigning vs name recognition... The winners and losers in politics are the people, not candidates - and this situation is no exception.

The core issue is that a group of people were specifically told not to vote in an election... that the election itself was unsanctioned and would be unofficial and disregarded.

Deciding to retroactively count the votes of those who voted, while not giving those who specifically decided against voting a chance to vote is a form of voter disenfranchisement.

Florida and Michigan are both simply awful situations: the DNC can either suppress the voice of those who voted despite a nullified status of their election, or suppress the voice of those who wanted to vote but were not given a reasonably fair chance.

At least in keeping the states nullified, the votes of one group are not prioritized more than any other group. It's sad that the best current solution is to rob everyone of their voice - but the choices are literally reduced to 'disenfranchise some people' or 'nullify it all / disenfranchise everyone'.

Personally, I think that Democrat Party owes the people of Florida and Michigan a fair chance to be heard. They should spend some of the MILLIONS of dollars in campaign and party funds to find a way to give people in both states a chance to cast votes in a fair election that is advertised to all as "Yes, your vote really WILL count". I could care less about exposure and campaign dollars - I only care that people are told "yes, we really are having an election that counts"

Posted by Jonathan at March 6, 2008 9:44 PM

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