Mending Michigan and Fixing Florida

I really hope this whole episode of how the Democratic delegates will be apportioned for either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in Michigan and Florida teaches the state party organizations a lesson; yes, it’s absurd for Iowa and New Hampshire to carry so much weight in the primary season, but moving up your own state primaries in response is not the answer.

And another ridiculous consequence of this is demonstrated here; Hillary Clinton (who needs this to be resolved more than Obama does to add to her delegate count - here) provides more “aid and comfort to the enemy” below…

Michigan had 156 Democratic delegates at stake and Florida had 210.

Florida has nixed the idea of a revote, but a proposal for a June 3 election in Michigan is under consideration.

Looking ahead to the general election, Clinton said ignoring the votes in Michigan and Florida would be a "grave mistake."

"The road to a Democratic White House goes through Michigan and Florida, and if Democrats send the message that we don't care about your votes, I'm sure John McCain and the Republicans would be happy to have them," she said.

If I hear Hillary say something to the effect of “vote for me or John McCain wins” one more time, I’m going to spit at my computer (a silly gesture, but no more silly than HRC’s fear mongering).

And I hope very, very much that the Florida/Michigan mess makes each party decide to sit down and figure out how to mend this broken presidential party selection process. This takes you to four proposals for fixing it, including selecting the smallest states first (referred to as “the Delaware Plan”), a national primary day in which all states would vote, and a regional lottery process (with the states in the groupings shown in the screen shot).

The thought of a national primary day appeals to me, but it could still lead to a situation where the voting results of states that report early could carry more weight than later-reporting states. Also, I just have a feeling that going from our present process to a national day for everyone creates too many logistical headaches; after all, we never seem to get through a national election in November without glitches somewhere, primarily in Florida or Ohio, and I don’t see how we could reconcile all primary voting on a single day (open and closed, depending on the state) given similar issues.

For those reasons, I’m more inclined to support some sort of rotating regional primary system, which was actually discussed in 2000 by Bill Brock of the Republican National Committee (as noted in the Center for Politics story), but both sides were unwilling to move much for different reasons: the Dems because the current system had seen Bill Clinton win two consecutive presidential elections to that point, and the Repugs because Bushco didn’t want to say or do anything that looked like the façade of 100 percent party unity behind his campaign was cracking in any way.

So, given the fact that the Repugs have seen states move up their primaries also (including South Carolina and Wyoming, as noted here), I think it's time for each of the national parties to revisit this and fix the problem once and for all.

Update 4/23/08: I'm glad the NASS agrees with me here (h/t to Bill in Portland, Maine at The Daily Kos).