Mullings An American Cyber Column By Rich Galen

US & Int'l Papers

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A Primary Error

Monday August 27, 2007

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From the GOP Midwest Leadership Conference
Indianapolis, Indiana

The Florida Democratic Party has been fined by the Democratic National Committee for moving its primary forward. The fine is: Florida gets no delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Denver next August.

The Florida state legislature moved its primary date up to January 29 which runs afoul of the DNC rules forbidding all but four states (Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina) from holding Presidential caucuses or primaries prior to February 5, 2008.

Florida moved the date of the Presidential primary forward to generate excitement, attention and (dare we say it?) money as the major campaigns will build ground operations, run TV and radio ads, and will have multiple visits by their candidates.

This action probably has limited effect in the real world of real politics. As the NY Times' Adam Nagourney pointed out in his piece on this issue:

"Assuming the party has a presumptive nominee by the time the convention is seated in Denver next year, it will be the nominee - not party officials - who would have the power to resolve a dispute over who is seated."

That's assuming someone has enough delegates from the other states to be able to win any floor fight on seating delegates. If, however, neither of the top tier Democrats have enough votes to roll the convention, then it becomes likely that someone like Richardson or even (Yikes!) Dennis Kucinich whose control a handful of delegates may be able to swing the decision on whether to seat the Florida Delegation.

In addition, the Michigan state legislature just moved that state's primary all the way up to January 15th which means the National Democratic Committee will have to disallow the Michigan delegation as well.

If this keeps up, the Democrats will be able to hold their National Convention in a Denver hotel ballroom.

But that is exactly one year away. A more pressing issue, it seems to me, is the whole matter of state legislatures spending taxpayers' money on deciding who will represent a political party on a ballot.

If, as conventional wisdom holds, some 40% of the electorate claims membership in neither the Republican nor the Democratic party, why should they pay to hold an election in which - for the most part - they cannot vote and still retain their independent status?

I am surprised that the ACLU or some other group hasn't filed a suit in Federal court demanding that the political parties - not the taxpayers - fund the elections from renting the machines, to hiring the poll workers, to managing the counting process and reporting the results.

There is nothing in the US Constitution which speaks to a two-party system. Over the past 218 years, the two-party system has evolved and, because the vast majority of office holders in the US belong to one or the other of the major parties, they have passed laws which make it very difficult for someone to run for public office as an independent.

Including running for President.

According to Clay Mulford, who was general counsel to the 1992 campaign of Ross Perot,

"As a matter of law, the system is antidemocratic. It's obviously critical to be on the ballot. Ballot access is controlled by the parties in the states ... It is very difficult to gain ballot access; it's very expensive."

Many states will grant a non-Republican/non-Democratic political party automatic access to the ballot if they can attain some threshold of support in the previous election for Governor or President.

If Ralph Nader had concentrated his resources on, and won delegates in, Oregon or Wisconsin in 2000 he might have been the (Yikes!) Dennis Kucinich of the Florida recount.

Nader told me in a green room conversation once that the reason he didn't do that was because he was more interested in gaining automatic ballot access for the Green Party in future elections by hitting that magic threshold in as many states as possible.

The Presidential primary system is broken and it will not be fixed this cycle. The two major parties should step up to their responsibilities and jointly come up with a set of rules which is fair to the parties, fair to the candidates and, most importantly - although they are too often forgotten in all this - fair to the voters.

On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A link to the Nagourney NY Times piece, a short discussion of 218 years, another in the enormously popular Interesting License Plate Mullfoto series; and a Catchy Caption of the Day.

Also, if you haven't yet, you should check out the Mullblog!. There is interesting stuff there and, you can respond for the whole world to see.

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