Hillary Clinton’s campaign is still spinning myths about the situation in Michigan and Florida. She’s blaming Barack Obama for opposing flawed revote plans and using the impasse to keep the illusion of her own viability alive.
Until mid-March, Senator Clinton was supremely uninterested in the idea of revotes in both states, insisting that the delegates “elected” in the disqualified primaries in those states should be seated as is. Only after it became too late for the practical planning needed to set up successful and legitimate revotes did she start enthusiastically backing them, using the opportunity to attack her opponent for “blocking” the revotes.
Let’s look at some facts, shall we?
Lie #1: The Obama campaign “blocked a revote in Michigan”
In fact, the Clinton campaign opposed plans for the caucuses that were Michigan’s back-up plan all along if it lost its game of chicken with the DNC (although state party officials were always dubious about how they could manage the logistics if it came down to such a revote).
Serious talk of revotes only began immediately after Senator Clinton’s wins in Texas and Ohio on March 4, as her only path to victory in the primaries:
March 6, 2008: BREAKING: MI Caucus Likely, Says DNC Rules Committee Member
A member of the DNC’s Rules And Bylaws Committee–the committee that stripped Florida and Michigan of its delegates for moving their primaries before February 5th–told me that Michigan plans to get out of its uncounted delegate problem by announcing a new caucus in the next few days.
“They want to play. They know how to do caucuses,” the DNC source said. “That was their plan all along, before they got cute with the primary.”
Michigan Democrats had originally planned on caucuses after the legally permissible Feb. 5 date, but then went along with top elected Democrats, including Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who pushed for an early primary.
But caucuses don’t tend to be advantageous to Senator Clinton. At this point she was still adamant there would be no re-do in Florida, and no caucuses in Michigan:
March 7, 2008: Clinton Says `No’ to a Caucus Do-Over
Hillary Clinton says the Democratic Party is stuck in a very tough spot as party leaders debate whether–and how–to seat delegates from Florida and Michigan at the nominating convention this August. And Clinton’s latest comments, in an interview with U.S. News yesterday, won’t make resolving the fuss any easier.
Many Democrats want a revote in both states, since the Democratic National Committee disqualified all their delegates because the states’ primaries were held too early in violation of party rules. Some party officials are suggesting caucuses as an option to get the delegates qualified–but that doesn’t pass muster with Clinton. “I would not accept a caucus,” she told us. “I think that would be a great disservice to the 2 million people who turned out and voted. I think that they want their votes counted.”
While Clinton nixed caucuses, the Obama campaign – and many local officials – rejected the idea proposed by Clinton surrogate Gov. Jennifer Granholm for “firehouse primaries.” “Firehouse primaries” are more complicated than caucuses, and state party officials feared they would be too expensive and logistically difficult for the state party to manage on its own within such a short time frame:
March 7, 2008: State Democratic chairman: Obama opposes Michigan `do-over’ plan
“This would be a much bigger operation than anything we’ve done in the past,” Brewer said. “Because of the stakes I could foresee a couple million people showing up to vote. We’d have to rent as many as 1,000 sites and we’d have to hire and train staff. We couldn’t do it with volunteers.”
Next came the idea of a mail-in ballot – for Michigan at least, since Clinton surrogates rejected it for Florida:
March 9, 2008: Party leaders weighing Michigan, Florida mail-in re-vote
(CNN) – Democratic leaders in Michigan and Florida suggested Sunday they might be moving toward a solution that would allow them to send voting delegates to the party’s presidential nominating convention this summer….
On CNN’s Late Edition, Sens. Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Claire McCaskill of Missouri — surrogates for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, respectively — did not rule out the prospect. “We can’t change (party) rules in the middle of this process,” McCaskill told anchor Wolf Blitzer, but added that if party leaders “come up with a fair way to redo this, whatever they decide, the Obama campaign will respect” the new process.
Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Clinton supporter, weighed in against the idea. “I would resist a re-vote for a couple of major reasons,” she said on Fox News Sunday. “Number one, the re-vote that’s being talked about right now would be a mail-in ballot. And we have never conducted a mail-in ballot in Florida. And in an election that is this important, an experiment like that is — now is not the time to test that.”
Clinton surrogates Gov. Corzine of New Jersey and Gov. Rendell of Pennsylvania offered to raise funding for the revotes, which some Obama supporters have objected to as potentially prejudicial for the outcome. That seems a non-issue to me, since the Obama camp was expected to raise the other half of the money.
What ended up derailing the Michigan revote was that either a firehouse primary or a mail-in primary would have meant excluding Democrats and independents who had asked for GOP ballots in the Jan. 15 primary:
One of the sticking points holding up a possible do-over election in Michigan is a rule that would ban anyone who voted in the Republican presidential primary from voting again in the Democratic one.
That ban would apply even to Democrats or independents who asked for a GOP ballot because Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was the only major candidate left on the Jan. 15 Democratic ballot.
To cast a ballot in a do-over election, voters would have to sign a statement saying they hadn’t voted in the GOP primary.
That could hurt Obama more, since his supporters were more likely than Clinton’s to have crossed over to vote in the GOP primary. Obama has had more success than Clinton attracting the votes of independents and Republicans in states where they could vote in Democratic contests….
Seventeen Democratic state House members said Tuesday they have concerns about holding another election, including disenfranchising Democrats who voted in the Republican primary.
“These people that chose to vote in that Republican primary in January did so after being told by the DNC that the Democratic primary did not count. They weren’t told that if they participated in a Republican primary they wouldn’t be eligible to participate in a redo that was going to happen in June,” said state Rep. Matt Gillard, an Obama supporter.
Michigan has open primaries, in which voters can cross over and vote in whichever party’s primary they wish. Aside from the software and logistical problems involved with carrying out the revote within the time required was the problem with the proposed revote legislation itself (PDF). It excluded voters who had decided not to vote in the primary they were told was invalid and that didn’t have the majority of the candidates on the ballot. Anyone who hadn’t wanted to vote for Clinton and who wanted to vote for Obama back on Jan. 15 didn’t have a chance to at that time. Those voters were the ones with the most incentive to cross over and vote in the GOP primary instead. And those are precisely the people who would have been excluded by the proposed revote legislation.
Acknowledging the difficulties with the proposed Michigan revote plan, and its inherent unfairness, only 2 of 17 state senators agreed to support it, effectively finishing it off.
Then, as if that weren’t enough, a March 26 federal ruling blocked access to the voter lists the state Democratic Party needed to manage who could and could not participate in the revote:
DETROIT — A federal judge on Wednesday ruled Michigan’s presidential primary law unconstitutional and blocked the state from giving voter lists from the Jan. 15 election to the state’s major political parties.
Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Mark Brewer said the ruling may have ended any chances of a new Democratic election to resolve the ongoing dispute over the state’s delegation to the Democratic National Convention. The state party, he said, needs the list to ensure that no one who voted in the Republican primary in January votes in any new Democratic contest, as required under the national party’s rules.
“If the Michigan Democratic Party cannot get the lists, then our friends at the ACLU may have driven the final nail in the coffin of any re-vote in Michigan,” Brewer said.
So the truth is that Hillary Clinton blocked Michigan’s plan for caucuses because she doesn’t do well in caucuses, and Barack Obama resisted legislation for the Michigan revote that would have targeted his supporters for disenfranchisement. But in the end what blocked a revote was the logistical and legal difficulties of holding a new vote that would be accepted by all parties as legitimate.
Lie #2: The Obama campaign “blocked a revote in Florida”
Through early March, the Clinton campaign opposed a revote in Florida (“Our position is that the voters of Michigan and Florida have spoken.”). As late as March 7, Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe’s response to the idea then being raised in Michigan and Florida about a redo was “no revote“:
Well, what we have said is that these folks have already voted. I mean, people talk about a revote. But there is no appetite in Florida or Michigan by the state legislatures. I mean, there’s no money. Who is going to pay the tens of millions of dollars to do this?
I’ve been informed that the Florida legislature, under no circumstances, would pay to have the Democrats redo it. So I agree with what has been said. The governors of both states have kept saying that the state parties in these two states need to work with the national party and come to some resolution of this matter. We just can’t leave 2.3 million voters, 1.75 million in Florida, and over 600,000 in Michigan, who went in and voted. They’ve already voted. And we just need to count the votes….
They’ve already voted. No reason they have to go back and vote again… I’m saying that the state parties in those states need to work with the national party and figure out how we count the votes that have already been voted.
As late as March 14 the Clinton campaign was still refusing to fight for revotes and “sitting on the sidelines with empty press releases” (while the Obama camp was saying it would agree to whatever the DNC decided).
Quite simply, by that point Florida Democrats had neither the ability nor the time to come up with a fair and workable plan for a revote within the time frame they had available. The plan that was proposed, for a mail-in ballot, faced opposition by many Florida Democrats – supporters of both Obama and Clinton – because of serious reservations on a number of solidly pragmatic grounds. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (a Clinton backer) stated her concerns:
Wasserman Schultz said Wednesday one of her main concerns about a mail vote would be winter visitors and poor people, who change addresses often.
“The chances of their ballot finding them are much smaller,” she said, creating unfairness.
Rep. Wexler made clear some of the reasons he and other Florida Democrats opposed it as well:
(Washington, DC) The Members of Florida’s Democratic Delegation in the U.S. House of Representatives met on Tuesday night and unanimously agreed to a statement in opposition to a new mail-in election or re-do election of any kind in Florida. The Democratic Members from Florida include both those who have endorsed Senator Obama, Senator Clinton, as well as Members who remain uncommitted.
Wexler strongly opposes the mail-in election proposal that has been suggested to ensure that Florida’s delegates are seated at the Democratic convention. “I am fully committed to ensuring that Florida’s delegates are fully represented in Denver. However, the mail-in proposal is misguided at best, and would likely result in an unmitigated disaster in Florida,” Wexler said.
“A mail-in election has never tested or attempted in Florida. It took Oregon over ten years to perfect their system. A mail-in election would raise significant issues of fraud – especially in this short window – and such an election could disenfranchise many Floridians by disproportionately limiting voting access to seniors, minority voters, young voters, lower income voters, new voters, and new residents. Also, a mail-in election pulled together at the last minute would surely lead to numerous lawsuits and controversy following the result. Another election controversy in Florida is the last thing anybody wants.
“Finally, fifteen of Florida’s largest counties are actively transitioning away from touch screens into an optical scan system with a voter verified paper trail. Any re-do election will jeopardize efforts to have this transition finished by the November Presidential election,” Wexler said on Wednesday.
The Statement by the entire Democratic House Delegation is printed in full below. Reps. Boyd, Brown, Castor, Mahoney, Meek, Wexler, Wasserman Schultz, Klein, and Hastings released the following joint statement.
“We are committed to working with the DNC, the Florida State Democratic party, our Democratic leaders in Florida, and our two candidates to reach an expedited solution that ensures our 210 delegates are seated.
“Our House delegation is opposed to a mail-in campaign or any redo of any kind.”
So the truth is that Hillary Clinton opposed a Florida revote until the very last minute, then provided tepid support for it. Florida Democrats had grave concerns about the legitimacy of any primary revote they could then provide before the cutoff date for the primary season, and for that reason declined to pursue a revote in Florida further, in favor of a negotiated solution between the campaigns, Democratic leaders in Florida, and the DNC.
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And if anyone needs a refresher as to why the Michigan-Florida delegate mess exists, it’s because Senator Clinton broke the four-state pledge she signed by participating in state primaries that defied the DNC’s scheduling rules when she had promised not to (Clinton campaign memo here):
Four State Pledge Letter 2008
Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina
August 31, 2007WHEREAS, over a year ago, the Democratic National Committee established a 2008 nominating calendar;
WHEREAS, this calendar honors the racial, ethnic, economic and geographic diversity of our party and our country;
WHEREAS, the DNC also honored the traditional role of retail politics early in the nominating process, to ensure that money alone will not determine our presidential nominee;
WHEREAS, it is the desire of Presidential campaigns, the DNC, the states and the American people to bring finality, predictability and common sense to the nominating calendar.
THEREFORE, I ____, Democratic Candidate for President, pledge I shall not campaign or participate in any state which schedules a presidential election primary or caucus before Feb. 5, 2008, except for the states of Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina, as “campaigning” is defined by the rules and regulations of the DNC. It does not include activities specifically related to raising campaign resources such as fundraising events or the hiring of fundraising staff.
__________ ____
Democratic Candidate for President DATE
She is claiming delegates from primaries in which she promised not to participate. How you can win delegates and popular vote totals from elections you are “not participating in” is quite a mystery, but it’s apparently not beyond the ability of Senator Clinton and her supporters to shamelessly clamor for her entitlement to them anyway.
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So when Clinton supporters make the claim that Barack Obama “blocked revotes in Michigan and Florida” they’re trying to sell you spin. To be blunt, they’re lying.
