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Let's vote again in Michigan and Florida--and let's have the campaigns help pay for it

By pharrell

The last thing our party needs is a bitter August fight over seating delegates. The second-to-last thing our party needs is to have disenfranchised voters living in two important November swing states. John McCain will be a tough enough opponent this fall without internal divisions on our side of the aisle--Democrats need to enter the general election season unified and ready to go. Given that, the obvious solution to this whole Florida-and-Michigan delegate mess is to cajole both states into voting again.

The DNC has already suggested that Florida and Michigan hold a second round of caucuses or primaries in either March or April, and has said that the convention will seat the states' delegates if they do. A second vote seems to be the fair solution all around: it gives Florida and Michigan voters a chance to play a meaningful role in selecting the Democratic presidential nominee; it gives both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama the opportunity to wage a fair, hard-fought contest in both states; and it denies the states' political leadership the advantages they hoped to gain by violating party rules. Seating the delegates from the January primaries, on the other hand, just isn't fair to the candidates--Barack Obama wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan, and neither Obama nor Hillary actively campaigned in Florida. It would also be unfair to the millions of democratic voters in the other 48 states, who (admittedly, sometimes grudgingly) voted in primaries and caucuses that complied with DNC rules.

The biggest problem with a second vote seems to be cost. It would cost several million dollars to organize elections or caucuses in both states, and both the state governments and the state parties profess not to have excess cash floating around. While it might be tempting to say that this simply serves them right for breaking rules that everyone else abided by, that view isn't really fair to the run-of-the-mill Democratic voters in both states, who had little-to-no say in when the states scheduled their primaries: We don't really want to penalize voters for the mistakes of party insiders. So here's my proposal: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, the DNC, and the state parties agree to split the cost of new election, with Clinton, Obama, and DNC Chair Howard Dean taking the lead in asking donors to contribute. A jointly-organized and evenly-funded "election fund" would send a signal of unity between the two candidates and the party, a sign that they as candidates and we as a party value the right of all Democratic voters to participate in the primary process on fair terms. I doubt that there would be a problem raising the requisite funds--given the amounts of money flowing into Democratic politics this year, my back-of-the-envelope guestimate of $4 million would be a relatively modest fundraising goal. Yes, in absolute terms that remains a lot of money. But it surely pales in comparison to the cost of a divisive floor fight some six months after John McCain has begun to unify the Republican party. In fact, I'll pledge $20 right now. Will you join me?

Full post as published by Harrell Blog on February 08, 2008 (boomark / email).