Splitting Votes

When Democratic National Committee officials gathered in Washington, D.C. Saturday to deliberate the question of how to handle the delegations from Florida and Michigan, emotions were raw from start to finish.

The day started with hundreds of supporters, mostly Sen. Hillary Clinton’s, chanting outside the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel and carrying signs with such messages as “Count My Vote or Count Me Out.” Throughout the session, there were frequent outbursts by demonstrators who had obtained tickets online to attend the meeting. After the vote, Clinton supporters were visibly upset, some crying that the committee’s decision had virtually sealed a November victory for the Republican nominee John McCain.

Michigan and Florida faced penalties for holding early primaries, in direct violation of party rules.

Following testimony from representatives for both Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama, the rules committee met privately for close to three hours and then voted publicly. The committee voted 27 in favor, with one abstention by one of its members who is from Florida, to seat the state’s entire delegation and allow each delegate only a half vote. On Michigan, the committee voted 19 to 8 to give 69 delegates to Clinton and 59 to Obama. The magic number now required to reach the nomination is 2,118. Clinton currently has 1,914 delegates, while Obama has 2,068.

“This decision was not made easily or lightly, but after listening to oral arguments made by the complainants, state parties, and both presidential campaigns, we believe this to be the most fair and equitable solution allowed within the rules,” says co-chair Alexis Herman, who served as labor secretary under Bill Clinton. “The committee arrived at its decision with three basic principles in mind: One, that we must be fair to the voters in both states. Two, that we must be fair to both campaigns who abided by the rules in good faith, and three, that we must be fair to the 48 states that followed the rules.”

The Republican Party has stripped half the delegates from New Hampshire, Florida, South Carolina, Michigan, and Wyoming because those states scheduled early primaries and caucuses on dates that were not originally agreed upon.

Being first in the nation to vote in presidential primaries is a treasured honor that until this year was enjoyed only by Iowa and New Hampshire. But the DNC changed its rules for this year’s election to allow South Carolina and Nevada to hold their primaries before Super Tuesday to add geographic and racial diversity to the process.

“It was great political theater and fascinating to see a process that usually

takes place behind doors in the legendary smoke-filled rooms,” says James Taylor, a University of San Francisco political scientist. Voters from Florida were feeling particularly sensitive because many believe they were disenfranchised during the 2000 presidential contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore. Clinton supporters also felt that the committee’s decision on Michigan unfairly penalized their candidate. In that state, where Clinton won 55% of the vote, Obama and other Democratic nominees still in the race voluntarily elected to remove their names from the ballot. Forty percent of the votes there were cast for “uncommitted.” All candidates, however, including Clinton, agreed to not campaign in either Michigan or Florida and that those elections would not count.

“We’re extremely gratified that the commission agreed on a fair solution that will allow Michigan and Florida to participate in the Convention. We appreciate their efforts, and those of the party leadership of both states, to bring this resolution about,” says David Plouffe, Obama campaign manager, in a statement issued by the campaign.

Yet Clinton campaign adviser Harold Ickes, who sits on the committee and voted last year to strip the two states of their delegations, used salty language to express his disgust over the meeting’s final outcome. He also announced that he had been instructed by Clinton to reserve her right to challenge the decisions made that day before the convention credentials committee in November.

Ohio Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, who is also a national co-chairman of Clinton’s campaign, was also unhappy with the committee’s decision. “The fact that they decided to count the Florida vote is significant and a victory for Clinton,” she says. “On the Michigan vote, I’m disappointed that they would take away votes from the candidate on the ballot where others had the option to be on the ballot and chose not to, and [that they] are presuming that those votes that were uncommitted were for all Obama, so she loses delegates as a result thereof. It’s disappointing that my party would do that. Clinton has said she reserves the option to go to the credentials committee about this [at the convention], and I think that’s a legitimate statement to make in light of all that’s been presented.”

The following day, Clinton won the Puerto Rico primary by 68%, although only about 400,000 voters turned up at the polls. That did not diminish the New York senator’s desire to continue in the race. In her remarks from Puerto Rico, Clinton said, “… when the voting concludes on Tuesday, neither Sen. Obama nor I will have the number

of delegates to be the nominee. I will lead the popular vote. He will maintain a slight lead in the delegate count. The decision will fall on the shoulders of those leaders in our party empowered by the rules to vote at the Democratic convention.”

South Dakota and Montana will hold their primaries on Tuesday, after which Obama is widely expected to reach or come extremely close to that magic number. The conventional wisdom is that beginning Wednesday, superdelegates who have so far held back their endorsements will begin lining up behind Obama.

“It seems to me that he’s going to be the nominee within a very short period of time–days not weeks. I suspect we’ll see Nancy Pelosi, the first woman speaker, leading an entourage of Democratic leaders to shut down Clinton’s campaign,” Taylor says. “It will be a very sad moment for a lot of people, because so many supported her and they have strong feelings. There’s a whole generation of women who wanted to see [a woman president] before they left the Earth. Not that many black people ever thought they’d see a [black president], and now they’re saying, let’s see what happens. Clinton made a tragic mistake–when she sacrificed her black vote, she lost this election.”