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For Democrats, Florida Primary May Not Count
be951 writes "Democratic party leaders are seriously considering making the Florida primary 'nonbinding', meaning they could ignore the actual vote by Florida democrats and allow party leaders to decide how Florida's more than 200 delegates are divided up among the candidates. 'I think it's much higher than 50-50 that we will make Jan. 29 a nonbinding' election, said Jon Ausman, a veteran Democratic organizer in Tallahassee and member of the Democratic National Committee. This is in response to Florida's move to an earlier presidential preference primary, which scrambled the primary calendar carefully worked out by the two national parties."
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I, for one, welcome our new democrat overlords.
Okay, now that I'm done with that, why would the democrats even consider this? It may be just a primary... but it's usually the most dedicated voters who turn out for primaries. Alienating them would not be a good thing for their party.
Is laid out pretty well in Broder's piece today in the Washington Post.
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RTFA
The party rules are that a state can't hold the primary before February 5. Florida is going to break that rule and the Democrats have to figure out what the penalty should be.
The Senate was not always elected by the popular vote. It was intended as a check and balance for the House of Representatives and for Federal power overall. Prior to the 17th amendment Senators were appointed by thier state. This allowed the State interests to be represented as well as the people, and because the States don't like being controlled it provided an effective check on Federal power and didn't encourage such blind adherence to the party line. It may have seemed a good idea at the time to quell the infighting in the state legislatures, but the long term consequences have been disastrous, imparting far too much power to the Federal government. Thus making it easier to influence by lobbyists since both houses are popularly elected and thus need to pander to the lobbyists for campaign funds.
And here is the data for 2004.
Sig cannot be found.
He wants the equivalent of "$15,849 per person in the Ketchikan Gateway Borough" to replace a seven minute ferry ride with a bridge almost as long as the Golden Gate and higher than the Brooklyn Bridge. That's a lot of ferry tolls they want us to pay for them to save 10 minutes every time they go there and back. Plus maintenance on the bridge. Maintenance on the ferry is probably done by the ferry owner (no idea if the ferry is publicly or privately operated).
The Florida legislature is Republican controlled and this move of the primary date happened after the DNC posted their planning calendar for 2008. Florida is almost 50/50 Rep/Dem voters and this is a good way to block the Democrat representation.
I drank what? -- Socrates
The current political parties are trying to pigeon-hole everyone and say that if you are "pro-choice," you must also be "pro gay," "favor higher taxes, especially on the wealthy," and "favor gun control."
You're quite wrong, if only in attributing this to some *intentional scheme* by the parties, like this is something they do on purpose.
In reality, this is common human group-based behavior. It's how people tend to think in groups.
People start to think that "everyone on my side is right" and "everything on the other side is wrong" even if the collection of those ideas is arbitrary and often contradictory, and no matter what kind of group we're talking about. Not a big scheme by American political parties.
Even George Washington warned against the formation of political parties.
Ironically, many of the founding fathers shared his feelings on this subject, yet created a first-past-the-post, winner takes all voting system in which powerful political parties would be virtually guaranteed.
Also note this is not a scheme by the political parties either. 2 hegemonic parties is a quite stable feature of our electoral system for 225+ years, surviving many challenges despite many cycles of actual political ideas contained within and many generations of their actual human members. Ask yourself, how could this happen if it were part of a intentional plan by the parties, as their members keep dying and being replaced over generations? It's simply a stable outcome of the game theory of our voting system.