More on those roaming primaries

[Pangloss]

On Saturday the Democratic National Committee reacted to the State of Florida's decision to move its primary up to the end of January. They voted to tell Florida that if they proceed with the early primary, any results from that election will not be recognized for the purpose of electing that candidate. In short, Florida will not be allowed to send its delegates to the convention, and it won't be counted in determining who the candidate is.

 

That all sounds very serious, but the interesting thing here is that Florida may very well ignore the DNC. After all, it's not as if the candidates are going to ignore Florida -- those votes are going to be far too important in the general election to risk annoying those key voters.

 

And perhaps more to the point, Florida's position may be that if it complies with the DNC request it's votes won't count anyway. That has been the contention of the individual states for some time now, and the whole reason for these shufflings.

 

Underlying all of this is a decrease in the authority of the national committees and an increase in the authority of the individual state committeees.

 

Another interesting twist in this story is that the date of the Florida Democratic Primary was determined by -- Republicans. That's because the date was set by the state legislature, which is supposed to make this decision based on what's best for the state (a state that's very focused on the tourism dollars that come from national exposure). The state legislature is controlled by Republicans (but it should be understood that the Florida Democratic Party is very much in favor of the move and has been strongly opposed to changing it back). (Note the interesting back-and-forth at the end of the NY Times article linked below.)

 

Two articles:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/us/politics/26calendar.html?em&ex=1188273600&en=786933bc52e9c2f2&ei=5087%0A

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=3523711