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Passion Of Florida Vote Cooled By Deal That's Only Half Bad

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 3, 2008

A reasonable solution for counting the votes in Florida's premature primary was reached Saturday by a Democratic Party committee. Florida will be allowed to send all its delegates to the Democratic Convention, but each delegate gets only one-half of a vote.

Given the mess that both voters and candidates were put in by the conflict between party rules and state law, the compromise reached Saturday is the best voters could expect.

Yet all Florida voters have a right to be outraged and disheartened. Losing half of Florida's vote total is an affront to democracy, especially after the high level of excitement and record turnout.

Remember, it was an official election, paid for by taxpayers, scheduled by elected lawmakers and honestly run by locally elected county officials.

The only thing improper was that it violated party rules written by people most Florida voters have never heard of. The Florida Legislature set the election a week earlier than party rules permitted.

One good feature of the Florida compromise is that delegates will at least be apportioned in the same ratio that voters cast their ballots. In the other contested election, in Michigan where Sen. Barack Obama decided not to run, the party is dividing the votes based on how it thinks the vote would have gone had Obama been on the ballot.

The Republican Party handled the matter much smoother. Republican leaders quickly decided that half the votes would count, so Florida's outcome carried weight right away.

The Democratic Party stubbornly said it would ignore all of Florida's votes even though voters themselves had done nothing wrong. It is now following the Republican example, but only after Obama built an insurmountable lead over Sen. Hillary Clinton. As a result, Florida's half-vote changes nothing.

Last year we encouraged the Legislature to move up the election to give the state more influence. Subsequent events proved us wrong.

The thinking was that in two previous presidential elections, the nominations were sewn up before Florida voters went to the polls in mid-March. But voting on Jan. 29 didn't work out as expected because courts decided that if party rules conflict with state rules, the party wins. The Legislature should make sure this mess doesn't happen again in the next presidential primary.

More importantly, Congress should change the laws to make it clear that parties must follow government rules, not vice versa. Election laws should set up a rational primary system, perhaps one with regional primaries and a rotating schedule that gives each region a turn going first.

Clear rules would minimize the role of weak party leaders, such as Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean, who allowed the Florida-vote fiasco to continue far too long. Dean says it's necessary to respect all the voters, including those who decided not to vote because he told them Florida was holding an illegal election and their votes wouldn't count.

If the parties want the power to disregard the will of voters, then the parties should organize their own elections and pay for them, too.

Party leaders can't be blamed for trying to impose order on the nominating process. But the parties have no way to enforce rules other than by throwing away votes.

Congress should make sure Florida's half-vote compromise is an asterisk in the history books that never appears again.

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