Michigan and Florida

As the people in Florida and Michigan flail about whining and moaning about being disenfranchised, let me point a few things out.

As a US citizen, you have no right to vote in a party primary. In some states the state party officials may decide it is an open primary, and in some states it may be a closed primary. But ultimately, it is up to the party to decide how they will choose their candidate and they lay out a system of rules so everyone knows how it will be done.

Now we are faced with two states that broke the rules and they want to either have the votes counted or to have a redo. Personally I think they lost their vote when they broke the rules. If they have been disenfranchized, and I would argue they have not, then they have been disenfranchised by their state officials and not by the Democratic National Committee. The DNC is simply enforcing the rules that everyone agreed to before the whole thing got started, and if they cave in now they will not be able to enforce any rules in the future.

I say no redo. But you know, if they want to have a re-vote fine, that's not my decision. The DNC should not pay one penny for it, because this is a situation created entirely by state officials. Make the states pay, and if the states choose to pass the costs on to the taxpayer then citizens should be doubly pissed, first for not getting their votes counted originally and second for having to pay for another election. Let the Florida Democrats pay for it, or even better, make the Governor's pay out of their own pockets since they are the ones who created this situation by signing the bills in the first place. If the DNC pays for it, the message that is sent is that the states can do whatever they want and in the end the DNC will clean up the mess. That's totally unacceptable.

But even if you have a redo and get the delegates seated at the convention, the super delegates from Florida and Michigan should get no vote. As party officials and the people in power, they had the ability to stop this craziness before it even started. They could have stopped the bills from getting passed in the first place, but they did nothing. This falls at their feet.

So while an argument can be made that the people of FL and MI should have their voices heard by a re-vote, the super delegates forfeited that right through their inaction. They allowed this to happen, they should be held accountable.