Monday, March 17, 2008

Florida Gets One Electoral Decision Right

The AP is reporting that the Florida Democratic Party has dropped its plan for redoing its primary via a mail-in vote.

I say, good. Best not to try something you've no experience at when the results are potentially crucial. However, while my initial inclination was to make a stale joke about admitting one's incompetence being the first step to recovery, a later bit in the same article gives me pause. Says party chair Karen L. Thurman:

... it's simply not possible for the state to hold another election, even if the party were to pay for it.

Now, the Democratic Party rules say that a primary contest must be held by June 10 for the results to count. I concede that Thurman's statement may be a negotiating ploy, but taken at face value, it is jaw-dropping. June 10 is nearly three months from now, and there is nothing new about the process. Just repeat what you did in January. Same ballot, same polling places, same counting procedures. What's the big deal?

Talk about arguing for your own limitations. Explain to me why this woman and her cronies are in charge again?

Of course, this whole thing would be a non-issue were a certain monster not so bent on changing the rules in the middle of the game.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Apparently it's not as east as that to hold an election. I saw an official interviewed in Fla on TV who said it takes 90 days to hold an election from the day you give them the go ahead. If you wanted to hold an election before June 10th they had to know by March 10th which is long past. I guess you have to print sample ballots and address them and then mail them out (when you're printing ballots for a whole state the printer can't get them back to you the next day and the names and addresses have to be certified and updated), arrange to rent the halls where the voting takes place and hire staff to run them, print the real ballots and arrange to get them counted, rent voting machines or however they do it down there, and all that kind of bureaucratic and logistic minutiae.

bjkeefe said...

Well, part of me says, the official would of course know more about it than I. Another part of me says, of course he's going to have a story about why it can't be done.

I will note that Michigan seemed to have been planning for another primary. Granted, not as big a state. On the other hand, probably proportionally fewer party workers, too.

However, there are possible other hiccups.

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