Every four years we have to witness a fracas between the Republican National Committee and/or the Democratic National Committee and state legislatures who want to move their primaries up in violation of the rules. Remember the ugly dispute between Clinton supporters and Obama supporters over the delegates from Michigan and Florida? It wasn’t pleasant. This year, the same thing is happening to the Republicans. And it’s quite likely to have a dominant impact on the nominating process, and perhaps even the general election.

The Republicans selected Tampa, Florida as host to their convention. Yet, Florida’s legislature has moved their primary to January 31st, 2012. The rules say that any state other than Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada that moves its primary earlier than March 6th will have half its delegates stripped. Needless to say, it’s awkward to have the convention host in violation of the rules. And, as you can see, Florida’s decision upsets the whole apple cart:

The four carve-out states of Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Carolina may begin their processes any time on or after February 1, 2012.

The remainder of the states may begin no earlier than the first Tuesday of March 2012.

Any state (other than the four carve-out states) that conducts its process prior to April 1, 2012, must allocate its delegates on a proportional basis.

Any state that violates this Rule will lose 50% of its delegates, alternate-delegates and potentially face many other penalties.

The four carve-out states will respond by moving their contests into early January and we’ll have a repeat of active campaigns during the holiday season. The RNC tried to prevent this by creating two incentives. The first incentive was the promise to strip 50% of the delegates of any state that violated the rules. The second incentive was to force any state that went earlier than April 1st to allocate their delegates on a proportional rather than winner-take-all basis.

So, for example, Florida would not only lose half its delegates but the winner would only get, most likely, a plurality of the state’s votes at the convention. Florida is supposed to have roughly one hundred delegates. You can do the math. In a winner-take-all situation the winner would net 100 delegates. The situation now would make it more likely that the winner would get around 20 delegates and the second-place finisher something like 15, netting the winner a mere five votes.

Update [2011-9-29 12:25:10 by BooMan]: As Massappeal points out, my argument/math here is wrong.

The difference should be enough to dissuade Florida from breaking the rules, but they seem to be operating on the assumption that nominations are won not through accruing delegates but by winning perceptions. They should ask Hillary Clinton how that worked out for her.

Moreover, Florida isn’t the only state moving up its date.

This comes on the heels of Michigan and Arizona moving their contests to Feb. 28 in an attempt to get a heads-up on the March 6 Super Tuesday primaries.

And Missouri, Alaska, Georgia and North Dakota have all made noise about moving up their dates, which could wreak additional havoc on the calendar.

The more states that move up into the proportional representation window, the harder it will be for any candidate to get a majority of the delegates. Candidates might run out of money, but they will not be mathematically eliminated. And, as long as a winner has not emerged, minor candidates who are actually winning some delegates will have a powerful incentive to stay in the race so that they can trade their delegates for something of value.

If the race remains mainly a two-way race between Romney and Perry, this will probably resolve itself once the winner-take-all states start tossing huge chunks of delegates one way or the other. But if a third candidate emerges who is keeping pace and even winning a state here and there, then we could easily see a brokered convention.