Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Commentary Blogs -> Balkinization

Legal Commentary

: Balkinization

Clinton and Mugabe

By Jack M. Balkin

Hilary Clinton has compared the Democratic Party?s failure to count the Florida and Michigan Democratic primary votes to the election crisis in Zimbabwe. There may be one similarity, but it is not the one Clinton claims.

CBS News reports that the candidate complained that in Michigan and Florida,

"people go through the motions of an election only to have them discarded and disregarded." "We?re seeing that right now in Zimbabwe," Clinton explained. "Tragically, an election was held, the president lost, they refused to abide by the will of the people," Clinton told the crowd of senior citizens at a retirement community in south Florida. "So we can never take for granted our precious right to vote."

There are so many obvious differences between the Florida and Michigan Democratic primaries and the Zimbabwe election crisis that it is difficult to know where to begin. But perhaps there is one similarity: in Zimbabwe, a losing candidate, incumbent Robert Mugabe, seeing his impending defeat, has worked to change an outcome produced under pre-existing rules. In arguing that the Democratic party should abandon its rules post-hoc ? rules Clinton herself agreed to before the voting ? she makes a parallel move.

Full post as published by Balkinization on May 21, 2008 (boomark / email).