Florida Dem. Primary Mess

[Kate CA]

Can anyone from FL explain to me why this is going on? Why did they hold the primary early if this was going to happen? I am just trying to understand the "why" of it all. :)

[Darcy in FL]

But would like to understand it also. I had the same thought.....why hold it early?? And if they did it intentionally then now why backtrack on the decision?:confused::confused::confused:

[Melinda in VT]

As I understand it (based on the wikipedia article), the primary date changed as a result of an amendment to a bill passed by the Florida legislature last spring. They changed the primary date knowing the Democrats had ruled Florida couldn't hold the primary before Feb 5.

 

I heard on TV that the legislature has a Republican majority.

[GothicGyrl]

Apparantly our early vote did not count, so they want to hold another vote so that it counts this time.

 

Because our legislature moved the date to an earlier date than the DNC(dem. nat.con.) said it should be, the DNC has now revoked all of our delegates and the big fight is getting everyone to agree and back to normal.

[Kate CA]

Because our legislature moved the date to an earlier date than the DNC(dem. nat.con.) said it should be, the DNC has now revoked all of our delegates and the big fight is getting everyone to agree and back to normal.

 

What I want to know is WHY would the *DNC* do that to FL folks? I cannot see how it would benefit them. Can you?

[GothicGyrl]

What I want to know is WHY would the *DNC* do that to FL folks? I cannot see how it would benefit them. Can you?

I have no idea. It certainly does not benefit us, but it's all politics anyway, and I hate politics..

[Kate CA]

I have no idea. It certainly does not benefit us, but it's all politics anyway, and I hate politics..

 

But you know what they say... if you don't participate, you can't complain! LOL :tongue_smilie:

[GothicGyrl]

But you know what they say... if you don't participate, you can't complain! LOL :tongue_smilie:

Which is exactly WHY I do participate. I just don't get why all the fuss (is what I meant). We should not have had our primaries earlier than the rest. That's the truth. The only reason I can think of is that they held the primaries early for the benefit of counting the snow bird vote who may not be here during the normal ones...

 

which, imho, is a stupid reason because I don't like the fact that they can come here and vote against things that us year rounders may need or want, then they leave and are allowed to go vote in their other state! Thusly, leaving us year rounders hanging and hurting because of their voting.

 

By that I mean--you are supposed to register to vote in a state that is your primary living state. And you can only vote in that state for Major elections, like Presidential. *I* am only referring to local elections, where snowbirds CAN vote in both of their living states on local issues. And that's what affects the ones who are here year round.

[Barb_]

What I want to know is WHY would the *DNC* do that to FL folks? I cannot see how it would benefit them. Can you?

 

I suppose the sanction is to deter other states from changing their primary dates willy-nilly to earlier dates. The earlier the primary, the more weight your vote often has becuase things are usually pretty well decided before now. This year was an exception for the Democrats.

 

Barb

[Kate CA]

I suppose the sanction is to deter other states from changing their primary dates willy-nilly to earlier dates. The earlier the primary, the more weight your vote often has becuase things are usually pretty well decided before now.

 

But here is the rub - why does the DNC have any right to dictate to states when they can hold their primaries? I guess I just don't understand how they have that kind of power - really in essence to change the way the end result is and remove the influence of FL and MI from the decision. I guess I am just amazed that it happens this way. Why would the FL Dems allow it to happen? It just doesn't make any sense to me. If they knew this was likely - why would they have allowed it? Kind-of odd to me.

[GothicGyrl]

If they knew this was likely - why would they have allowed it? Kind-of odd to me.

 

Believe me, even the republicans I know, knew this would happen and we ALL agreed it wasn't good, but we were and still are, powerless to do anything about it. It was passed as some type of amendment!

[Jenny in Florida]

. . . the legislature was hoping that Florida would get more attention from the candidates (and, of course, more of the money that gets spent on campaigns) if they moved our primaries up earlier in the process. See, the fact that the Democrats haven't yet settled on a clear front-runner by this point in the campaign is unusual. And the thinking was that they wanted Florida to have more of a "voice in" (and, again I mention, more of the bucks spent on) the primary process.

 

So, they moved up the date, despite the fact that BOTH of the major parties made it clear that doing so violated their rules and would likely result in loss of some or all of the delagates at the respective conventions.

 

Now, when it came to the point, the DNC said it would not seat any of Florida's delegates, while the RNC only cut the number in half. (Although I have no proof of this, I suspect that is because it was a Republican-controlled legislature that passed the amendment.)

 

The reason, by the way, that the parties are allowed to do this is because the primaries are not considered state elections. The primary process is "owned" by the party organization within each state, which is why it varies from state to state, with some holding elections and others caususes and still others (like Texas) some sort of hybrid.

 

So, the whole thing backfired on Florida, because not only did the DNC take away all of our delegates (and the RNC half), but the DNC pressured the major candidates into pledging not to campaign here during the primary. (They did allow them to come in for fund-raisers, though. Nice, huh?) And, because everyone knew our primaries essentially wouldn't count, there was no economic boom in the form of big media buys or an influx of campaign staffs and reporters.

 

Now, however, that the Democratic race is still so tight, Florida's delegates (and those from Michigan, which is in a similar mess) are looking a whole lot more important to the remaining candidates. So, they'd like to find some way to get us back in the game. They can't just count the votes from the first go-round, though, because it wasn't DNC-sanctioned (and because they're hearing from a lot of folks who sat out the election because they had been told it was meaningless). They can't just run another election, because no one wants to pay for it. So, they're toying around with this concept of a mail-in vote, because it would be cheaper than any other option.

 

Personally, I'm so disgusted by the whole thing, and by the way that no one in any position of authority--or, in fact, the candidates, themselves--seems to actually care about my vote that I've recently re-registered as an independent.

 

Of course, now I can't vote in ANYONE's primary, but I'm finding it pretty difficult to care.

 

--Jenny