ORLANDO -- With over 4 million registered Democrats in Florida, the proposed vote-by-mail redo of the state's presidential primary would be a grand but potentially disastrous experiment -- just verifying the signatures on the returned ballots could be a nightmare reminiscent of the 2000 debacle.
Here's a solution: Only send ballots to registered Democrats who did NOT vote in Florida's Jan. 29 primary (voting records show who voted and who didn't). That would cut almost in half the number of votes to process by mail. For choosing delegates to the national convention count both the new mail-in results and the original primary. Call it a Do-More instead of a Do-Over.
Barack Obama should have the advantage in the new mail-in balloting if his supporters are correct in arguing that many of his voters did not show up on Jan. 29 because they thought it would not count. Hillary Rodham Clinton obviously benefits from any solution that counts the primary she's already won by 17 percentage points.
Such pros and cons for each candidate should be a reason to consider this approach. No solution is going to work if it only benefits one side. Now on Craig Crawford's Video Trail Mix: DEMOCRATS GONE WILD!
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Stop the carping over what to do about what to do about Democrats who have been disenfranchised by their party leaders. If you don't, come the general election, you'll wish you had.
Plus, it seems to me you're saying that you don't want them campaigning in Florida to effect anyone's vote. What are you afraid of? Do you talking heads really think we the people are so stupid that we don't see how you're trying to taint the voting? I'm ashamed of you, Craig. I used to respect you but not any more.
In distinct contrast, once again, the ever cool, calm, effective Obama wants to follow the rules. Not a bad "habit" for a president to have.
I've liked a similar idea from the start of this quagmire.
First, say they can do a "redo".
Second, hold a caucus (could be like a NM caucus - vote all day long - but those that want to be delegates at the end of the day come together to decide who are the delegates) in each state. In this caucus - the voters in the caucus make 2 decisions:
1) show support for their candidate
2) decide whether or not to affirm the January totals. If they do, then 1/2 of the delegates in the state go toward the breakdown from January, the other half from the new caucus. If a caucuses in CDs vote against this concept - then they only get the 1/2 from the new caucus. This would be done to decide how the CD delegates are counted - so in some CDs it could be half and half and in others only new results.
Now - as for the At-Large and PLEOs - here is where the states are held accountable - they only get 1/2 of these delegates and they are only based upon the new caucus results.
MI and FL parties need to be held accountable for doing something wrong (moving up the vote) - other states have party-run presidential preference elections that the states don't pay for, the parties do. FL and MI were both offered this option in 2007 by the DNC (and have the DNC pay for it) - the state parties turned this down and stuck with their January dates.
All voters must vote at the same place in time given all that has happened since the non-primary occurred. Otherwise, that is like saying that all the people who did not vote in the last presidential election should now have a chance to vote for Bush or Kerry all over again.
Wait a minute, . . . there might be something to this.