From the Florida Dems FAQ...
on the primary move:
Who sets the date for Florida's Primary?
The state-run Presidential Preference Primary date is set by the Florida Legislature. In the 2007 legislative session, the Republican Speaker of the House made it a priority to move up the Primary to January, in violation of both Democratic and Republican National Committee Rules. The Legislature passed the bill, which also included the new requirement that all Florida elections have a paper trail starting in 2008. Governor Charlie Crist signed the bill into law in May.So what's all the fuss about?
Florida, like every other state, is required to submit a "Delegate Selection Plan for the 2008 Democratic National Convention" to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) explaining how and when the state will pick and apportion its delegates for the presidential nominating process. Florida has 210 delegates. We submitted our Plan earlier this year, and the DNC found it to be in non-compliance with DNC Rules because our state-run Primary date does not comply with the schedule ordered by the DNC's rules. Therefore, they have issued a 100% reduction of our delegates to the national convention.Why didn't the Florida Democratic Party follow the Rules?
Florida's Primary date, as determined by state law, violates one part of the Rules because it comes before February 5, 2008. The DNC only allows Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina to go before February 5, but Florida law set ours for January 29. The DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee (RBC) is the only body that can grant final approval of the Delegate Selection Plan, but the Credentials Committee of the Democratic National Convention, which will be formed next year, decides who actually attends the Convention.The DNC says that Florida could have applied to hold an early primary when it was developing the calendar, but didn't. Why not?
In Florida, the Legislature is controlled by Republicans. Democrats must prioritize what they work on to achieve the best they can for Floridians. An early primary was never a priority for Democrats, who remain far more concerned with issues such as insurance reform, increased healthcare for children, and improving our schools.The Rules say you had to try to stop the primary move, but Democrats voted for the law. What gives?
Initially, before a specific date had been decided upon by the Republicans, some Democrats did actively support the idea of moving earlier in the calendar year. That changed when Speaker Rubio announced he wanted to break the Rules of the Democratic and Republican National Committees. Following this announcement, DNC and Florida Democratic Party staff talked about the possibility that our primary date would move up in violation of Rule 11.A.Party leaders, Chairwoman Thurman and members of Congress then lobbied Democratic members of the Legislature through a variety of means to prevent the primary from moving earlier than February 5th. Party leadership and staff spent countless hours discussing our opposition to and the ramifications of a pre-February 5th primary with legislators, former and current Congressional members, DNC members, DNC staff, donors, activists, county leaders, media, legislative staff, Congressional staff, municipal elected officials, constituency leaders, labor leaders and counterparts in other state parties. In response to the Party's efforts, Senate Democratic Leaders Geller and Wilson and House Democratic Leaders Gelber and Cusack introduced amendments to CS/HB 537 to hold the Presidential Preference Primary on the first Tuesday in February, instead of January 29th. These were both defeated by the overwhelming Republican majority in each house.
The primary bill, which at this point had been rolled into a larger legislation train, went to a vote in both houses. It passed almost unanimously. The final bill contained a whole host of elections legislation, much of which Democrats did not support. However, in legislative bodies, the majority party can shove bad omnibus legislation down the minority's throats by attaching a couple of things that made the whole bill very difficult, if not impossible, to vote against. This is what the Republicans did in Florida, including a vital provision to require a paper trail for Florida elections. There was no way that any Florida Democratic Party official or Democratic legislative leader could ask our Democratic members, especially those in the Florida Legislative Black Caucus, to vote against a paper trail for our elections. It would have been embarrassing, futile, and, moreover, against Democratic principles.
It was about paper trails, people. The Republican legislature attached a "poison pill", the requirement of paper trails for electronic voting machines, and dared the minority Dems to vote against it.
Democrats should be leading the Florida delegation to Denver with a parade; they risked the ire of the Howard Dean in order to protect the integrity of the ballot. At this point, I don't care if they voted for Mickey Mouse in the primary, just so their vote counts.
Here's an article from May, 2007, describing Gov. Crist signing the bill with both provisions, primary move and paper trail:
Florida Embraces Paper Ballots, Changes Presidential Primary Date
Posted on Friday, 4 of May , 2007 at 11:48 amTALLAHASSEE, FLA -- In a 118-0 vote in the Florida House of Representatives, a bill was passed requiring all Florida counties to have paper ballot voting technology in place before the 2008 Florida primaries and general election. The House vote comes shortly after the Florida Senate approved a similar measure.
The ACLU of Florida applauded the Legislature for acting on Gov. Charlie Crist's commitment to change the State's voting system to a paper ballot-based technology. "The battle for fair elections in Florida now focuses on the 15 formerly DRE counties, which must act independently to ensure that disabled and language-minority voters will not be second-class citizens," said Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida.
Crist congratulated the Florida Legislature for passing legislation that will replace touch-screen voting machines with optical scan machines statewide for Election Day voting and early voting sites. He also praised the Legislature for changing the date of Florida's presidential primary to an earlier date - the last Tuesday in January -- Jan. 29.
Comments
Thanks for this. It has ired me to hear over and over that "Florida broke the rules" without pointing out that it was the only way to get paper trail ballots passed.
Posted by: T-Ray | March 11, 2008 09:51 AM
Yes, it's about time this blog said that the Michigan and Florida delegates should be counted. So what if they held their primaries earlier than expected? People have voted and need their voices heard in the delegate count. The cost is prohibitive to have a "re-do". Gov. Dean has his head way up where the sun don't shine if he thinks the primaries should be redone. The so-called rules were stupid and arbitrary to begin with. Who decided? I thought we took care of that problem back in 1982. What's up people? I attended the Tennessee rules convention in 1982. A state should be able to decide when it has its primary and/or caucus. I thought that was agreed upon.
Posted by: Steve Plonk | March 11, 2008 11:29 AM
Great background.
But... to me, what you've described makes it a tragedy, not a reason to seat those delegates. FL Dems properly wanted a paper trail (and presumably the other elements of good elections, i.e. audits?). Fine. But it's not as if there wouldn't have been another opportunity. They made a decision to go for that and join the FL GOP in a calculated attempt (and as it turns out a very well aimed one) to blow up the Dem primary process. The result, if pressures for the FL delegates to be seated succeed, will be a patently unfair 2008 primary process for FL noncontestant Obama, and will almost as certainly be a free-for-all 2012 primary process -- with schedules for party primaries as often as not set by hostile legislatures with malicious intent. That will be undemocratic too; paper trails aren't the only element of fair elections -- so is a predictable process, controlled by the political organizations attempting to determine their own nominees.
What I'm saying is the FL Democrats knew, or should have known, that there was a price to be paid. This is the price. The Democratic Party has a right to set the rules for how it selects its presidential nominee. FL Dems, by your account, weren't strong enough to keep from being blackmailed into breaking those rules. I sympathize, I really do. But I don't agree that sympathy should translate into the FL GOP getting away with electoral vandalism in these 2008 primaries.
Posted by: Thomas Nephew | March 13, 2008 12:39 AM
So, Thomas, we disenfranchise 1.7 million Democratic voters because some other state "might" move up next time? Don't you think that this primary season proved that later primaries have just as much pull as early ones? As I sit here in California, I'm sure hundreds of Democratic activists who pushed for the Super Tuesday move are now kicking themselves for abandoning June - we could have had both Obama and Clinton all to ourselves for weeks.
Besides, you're claiming that party politics are more important than individual suffrage - something I as a big D and little d Democrat will never concede.
Posted by: MB | March 13, 2008 01:17 AM
Hold a revote. That's the only way it doesn't blow up big time.
We're not a pure democracy, we're a republic. That means, if your representatives do something stupid, you're SOL. Don't vote for them next time.
Posted by: Tim | March 13, 2008 09:14 AM
So, Thomas, we disenfranchise 1.7 million Democratic voters because some other state "might" move up next time?
No, MB -- now that we're on a first name basis -- not "we," not "me." The FL legislature did that with its eyes wide open.
you're claiming that party politics are more important than individual suffrage
Democracy is a process, not a checklist -- and it's a process that's agreed on in advance. Individual suffrage is empty if the elections process itself is manipulated like this. What the FL legislature did is like what the TX legislature did at Tom DeLay's behest back in '03 (link) -- instead of geographic redistricting for partisan gain and mischief, it's temporal redistricting.
I agree with Tim -- there should be a revote. But if there isn't, that's not my fault, that's not Howard Dean's fault, that's the fault of Florida's state and national politicians. Together, they've created the mess, and they're refusing to solve it.
FWIW, I also agree with the notion that IA and NH shouldn't have a monopoly on the first caucus and/or primary. I think that should be rotated among the states. But there is a point to having manageable, orderly early rounds; that way it's not all about "inevitability" and having $millions piled up. You know and I know that the odds of an underdog prevailing in a pileup of FL and MI along with SC etc. right out of the gate would have been next to nil.
There's also a point to having a party's nomination process controlled by that party, not by hostile outsiders. It's about having a process with clear rules that that party thinks will lead to the optimum candidate, not the richest one or the most well-connected one. If the GOP wants to, say, make their nominees sign a no new taxes pledge, that would be their call. If the Dems want to enforce a primary schedule that gives underdogs and outsiders a fighting chance, that's their call.
If two states can cut in line like this, others will follow, the process will get front-loaded and only millionaires and people with stratospheric name recognition need apply -- when the point of primaries ought to be earning that name recognition, and the resources needed to carry on.
So consider maybe climbing down off your high horse about little "d" democracy. If the possibility of managing the Democratic Party's nomination process is conceded like this, that will be a blow against democracy.
Posted by: Thomas Nephew | March 13, 2008 11:58 AM
Mr. Nephew, please, excuse me for my past presumptiveness.
As most of my other posts will indicate, I also support a revote, if the original vote is not honored. I am only adamantly opposed to not seating the delegates at all (denying the vote) or fraud (re-apportioning the vote arbitrarily.)
I don't believe honoring little-d democracy by supporting full voter enfranchisement puts one on a high-horse - I think it's a core value that we should strive and, frankly, where many times in the past I've come up short. Just a few months back I was swept up in the "they must be punished, we must have order" mentality, and promoted it on this here blog, as did Eric. It was all good in theory, but when I actually thought about the impact on individual voters, now and in November, it didn't seem like such a good idea. Plus, I still argue the this election cycle is more of an incentive NOT to move up in the future, more so than threats and penalties.
There are other ways of punishing state parties than refusing to seat elected delegates (disenfranchisement). You can cut their funding, restrict the voting of their DNC man/woman participants, cut back their number of superdelegates. But to hit punish the voters, I still argue, is wrong.
Also, it can't all be about rules, because both New Hampshire and Iowa broke the rules too, by moving their primary and caucus - did the DNC take away their delegates? Why didn't they? Plus, they promised real reform, with at least one early contest in a true-blue state - instead, we get IA, NH, NV and SC, one of which is solid red, two lean red and one's a toss-up.
Posted by: MB | March 13, 2008 02:03 PM