Laying the groundwork for a court battle that could divide the Democratic Party, the Reverend Al Sharpton is threatening to sue the Democratic National Committee if it counts Florida's primary results in the official presidential delegates tally.
Rev. Sharpton is traveling to Florida today to compile lists of residents who skipped the January contest because they thought their votes would not count. He plans to have those residents sign affidavits saying they would be disenfranchised by the seating of the Florida delegation, in the event the Democratic Party allowed that to happen.
The party had promised to exclude Florida and Michigan from the nomination process after the states scheduled their primaries in January, earlier than party rules had allowed, but the close contest between senators Clinton and Obama has turned attention toward those primaries, prompting debate between the campaigns and party leaders over how to handle the lockout.
Mrs. Clinton's campaign has said it wants the Florida and Michigan primaries to count, while Mr. Obama's campaign has said it will support the Democratic National Committee's rules.
I posted previously on Sharpton's statements about the situation in Florida and his desire that the DNC stick to their rules. While I admire his current promotion of fair play, I can't help but ask where Sharpton's lawsuit was in 2000 when thousands of Republicans in Florida's panhandle didn't vote after the networks called the race in Florida before the polls were closed (and called it wrong as well)? Where was his sense of fairness then?
Sen. Bill Nelson is promoting a do-over by mail ballot that might salvage the Florida votes:
WASHINGTON — Florida Sen. Bill Nelson is leading the charge for a mail-in ballot re-vote so that Florida voters can be seated and their delegates counted at the Democratic National Convention in August.
Nelson, a Hillary Clinton supporter, hit the airwaves on Sunday, and offered an editorial in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, to explain why the mail-in process would be the fairest and most economical way to include Florida’s delegates who had been stripped from the count because the state held its primary before Feb. 5 Super Tuesday.
Michigan too was penalized and is also looking to be counted.
Nelson wrote that he has already spoken with Gov. Charlie Crist, who would support the idea of a mail-in ballot. He said that it would have to get started soon.
“Overseas ballots would have to go out by the third week in April. Voters in Florida would have to get their ballots the first part of May. And we would need to set early June deadlines for ballots to be returned and tallied,” he wrote in The Wall Street Journal.
But Nelson doesn’t yet have the support of the Democratic presidential primary candidates, who declined to campaign in the state. Clinton won both Florida and Michigan, although Barack Obama didn’t have his name on the ballot in Michigan.
They're talking about mailing to every registered Dem. Hey, what about the Republicans and independents who were allowed to vote in most of the other states? Should they get to pick the nominee as well?
Obama might agree to this plan because he didn't do that well in the first go-around and might have a better finish this way. I don't think Clinton will want to accept this plan because she's trying to get the original results approved along with her big win.
Hillary's main goal right now is to try and get ahead of Obama in popular votes, and anything that threatens to reduce her margin of victory probably won't be very welcome.
I'll talk about this subject and more on tonight's BlogTalkRadio program with special guest Joe Carter of Evangelical Outpost. You can hear by clicking on the icon. Feel free to call in and join the conversation. The show kicks off at 7pm PT Monday night.I've expanded Monday's show to 60 minutes to give us plenty of time. The call-in number will be (347) 347-5547.
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