Do Overs in Michigan and Florida

Apparently governors of Michigan and Florida are willing to pony up the money for redo of their respective primary elections. Just today Yahoo News is reporting that DNC Chairman Howard Dean is ready to give them their way.

“All they have to do is come before us with rules that fit into what they agreed to a year and a half ago, and then they’ll be seated,” says Dean, who has come to realize that the party’s dysfunctional process now threatens to become a major issue in a close race for the nomination between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Given the fact that neither Obama or Clinton will be able to lock up 2025 delegates before the convention it will be very interesting if MI and FL are thrown back into mix.

I think you misread some key elements of this story.

1) This is not a case of Dean “giving them their way”. He’s not caving here. They’ve always had the option to come into compliance with DNC rules by redoing the election (as I mentioned in this earlier post).

2) This story doesn’t mention that either state has committed to paying for a new election. In fact, the columnist urges the DNC to pay for it (which is somewhat ridiculous)

If there’s another story that you didn’t link that says they’ve agreed to pay for it, I’d be interested to read it.

At one point I thought I read FL governor Crist had indicated that FL would foot the bill. Apparently not - sorry about the error.

Also, I still consider this caving in on Dean’s part.

How so? This has happened before, and the DNC’s rule states that they won’t seat delegates from primaries held before the cutoff date.

The state is always given the option to fix things, because the DNC doesn’t want to disenfranchise the voters.

“And oh, by the way, any means of bringing these two states into the process now as tight as the race is, will grant them both precisely what they wanted in the first place: Decisive roles in picking the nominee.” Tom Foreman CNN

He explains it nicely for me.