A Democratic Solution?
March 10, 2008
In the debate over what to do about Florida and Michigan, the Democratic party has been considering a wide array of options – some controversial, some experimental, but none universally accepted. The latest fan favorite is no exception.
According to Tom Foreman, one of CNN’s Washington Bureau staff, “the Democrats… should have seen it coming.” The DNC set the rules and the state parties agreed to them. The state parties in Michigan and Florida, however, started “angling for a bigger say in the election process” by moving their primaries ahead of Super Tuesday. Following the rules they had set down, the DNC stripped the two states of their delegates: “if they didn’t stop these two big players, they feared an avalanche of others would follow. Christmas caucuses. Halloween primaries. Who knew where it would stop?”
But with fears that voters in two key general election states will punish the Democratic Party for not counting their votes, people are quick to suggest alternatives. So far the main calls have been to count the primaries as they stand or to hold all new contests. The former would unarguably shift the nomination in Hillary Clinton’s direction, the latter is something no one is willing to pay millions for.
A new suggestion has surfaced, though – one which DNC Chairman Howard Dean has described as “a very good process” (AP). The process would be a mail-in primary: every voter would receive a ballot by mail, and would mail in their vote. Dean said of the idea, “It’s comprehensive, you get to vote if you’re in Iraq or in a nursing home. It’s not a bad way to do this.”
So what’s the problem? Like other suggestions that have been brought up, one of the main problems is cost. Dean has said that the DNC can’t pay for it because they need funds to cover the cost of the general election. Florida Governor Charlie Crist (a Republican) has ruled out the possibility of the State of Florida to pay for it. As for Michigan, Senator Carl Levin (a Democrat) says that state law would not allow it: “There’s no way to have a primary. That’s state law. That can’t be changed, and that can’t be paid for” (CNN).
Levin suggested that a mail-in caucus would be legal, but that there would be too many security problems. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat from Florida, also raised questions about security: “We have never conducted a mail-in ballot in Florida, and in an election that is this important, an experiment like that is – now is not the time to test that.”
So the question now is, if no compromise agreement can be reached, which original solution will the Democratic Party take? Will they count the original votes, or stick with party rules? Chairman Howard Dean has given his answer: “You cannot violate the rules of the process and then expect to get forgiven for it… The only way to [yield an honest result] is to stick to the rules that were agreed to by everybody at the beginning.”
