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By Refusing To Count Our Votes, Democrats Are Writing Off Florida
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Published: August 28, 2007
The Democratic National Committee, which accused Florida of failing to count every vote during the 2000 presidential election, says it won't count the votes of Florida Democrats in the 2008 presidential primary.
That's right. The party that castigated Florida for disenfranchising voters now plans to disenfranchise every Democratic voter who participates in Florida's primary.
What hypocrisy.
The DNC treads dangerous ground by snubbing Florida voters at a time when Republicans are running hard.
Although Florida is a battleground state, it leans Republican in presidential politics. In the last eight presidential elections, only two Democrats have won the Sunshine State: Bill Clinton in 1996 and Jimmy Carter in 1976.
Yet with its actions, the Democrats' tone-deaf leadership is encouraging Florida Democrats to re-register as Republicans so that their votes will count in the primary. Think of the implications there.
The DNC made the no-count decision over the weekend to punish Florida for moving its primary to Jan. 29, where it will play a bigger role in presidential politics.
Party leaders are trying to maintain control over the antiquated nominating process that gives small states - Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina - the first and loudest voice in picking the nominee.
Certainly every state would like to go first, which is why a rotating system of regional primaries is preferable to the system we now have.
The party's hard-line decision to keep the status quo provoked a nasty split between national and state leaders, with Florida Democrats contemplating a federal voting-rights complaint against their own party.
Those who care about civil rights should challenge the Democrats' move, too.
By writing off Florida, the DNC risks making its national convention even more irrelevant than it already is.
Increasingly, citizens pay scant attention to political conventions, which have become coronations for presumptive nominees. As a result, television networks have reduced prime-time coverage and threaten to cut it even more.
If the Democrats don't count Florida's votes, Florida television stations should refuse to broadcast the Democratic National Convention in prime time.
While the candidates watch the fight from the sidelines, they should realize that it would be political suicide to not campaign in Florida. Remember the bounce that Republicans Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee recently gained from the straw poll in Ames, Iowa - an event so small that Republicans Rudy Giuliani and John McCain refused to participate?
Consider the bounce that Florida's victor would get just a week or two before several other big-state primaries. Most likely, they will become their party's nominee.
The DNC has given Florida's party 30 days to come up with a solution, but a flawed primary system is the national party's problem to solve.
If the DNC wants to stop states from leapfrogging each other, then come up with a better system.
But don't punish Florida's Democrats for wanting their voices to be heard and their votes to count.
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