Rules Committee meeting background

This is my take on the Democratic National Committee meeting of the Rules & Bylaws Committee this morning to determine what will happen with the delegates for Florida and for Michigan. To give the history, some of which I didn’t know until today, this is what got us here.

The DNC in 2006 decided on a schedule for states to hold their primaries and caucuses. The states democratic chairs and committees agreed to those dates and the penalty that if a state went earlier than allowed they would loss at least 50% of their delegates in deciding the nominee. These two states are completely different in what got them to this point.

Florida:
The state legislature is 2 to 1 Republican controlled, and they were working on legislation to update Florida election process and law. This had unanimous support. The Republican led legislature decided to add an amendment moving the primary up earlier than allowed by the DNC. The state Democrats tried to stop this but could not vote against this legislation. They even submitted an amendment to return the primary to a different day but it was defeated by the Republicans. Ultimately the democrats voted for the legislation to protect voter rights and have a paper trail, but included the earlier primary.

Michigan:
Michigan applied along with 11 other states to have their primary moved up to January as the DNC decided to add two more states to the early vote timeframe, joining Iowa and New Hampshire. The DNC decided on South Carolina and Nevada, and the rest of the schedule was set. After the Florida situation unfolded, the Democratic leadership decided that they were going to move up their date. There wasn’t any trickery or back room dealing; they just decided they were going to do it anyway.

Both of these states made their decisions early in 2007, and the DNC gave them ample time to try to schedule another primary later that would be counted. Neither state was able to make that happen.

In Florida I can see having sympathy for the voters and the Democratic leadership who tried all they could to protect their voters. In Michigan though, the Democratic leadership brought this on themselves and now they demand that all their delegates be counted and for it to be counted exactly as the ballot results show.