Heads up, Michigan voters

[novapsyche]

Unexpected wrinkle for Clinton in Michigan

The national party voted to strip Michigan of delegates as a penalty, but party leaders in the electoral-vote rich state have expressed confidence that they will be seated at the convention.

None of the candidates, including Clinton, will be campaigning here, and none have authorized write-in campaigns–-which means that, under state law, their supporters cannot cast write-in votes for any of them.

But if at least 15 percent of the voters in a congressional district opt for the "uncommitted" option rather than voting for Clinton, delegates not bound to any candidate could attend the national convention--a development that could allow Edwards or Obama supporters to play a role in candidate selection there.

Comments

[fadedpaladin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I heard about this. The blog I read it about mentioned an additional clusterfuck: the ability to vote Uncommitted wasn't made clear/announced early on, so quite a few democrats (and prolly a few left leaning undecideds) wanting absentee ballots requested *republican ballots* cuz they didn't like the remaining democratic choices, and felt that being able to vote for the least evil republican was the best alternative. Sorry if this is vague, I'm really sleepy.

Also, you're generally way more with it on politics than me. What the hell went down to cause this to happen?!

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

Your guess is as good as mine. Michigan was like, "We want to be relevant early," and the Democratic Party was like, "Don't do it!" The legislature went ahead and passed the bill moving up the primary. The governor (who, by the way, supports Ms. Clinton) signed the bill. The law was challenged in court and found to be unconstitutional, but due to limited amount of time left for Michigan to "be relevant" the Secretary of State went ahead and scheduled the primary for January 15. (Or at least this is what I can stitch together from staggered mornings of NPR over the last three months.)

Note, again, that all of the other "top" candidates removed their names from the ballot.

[davehogg.livejournal.com]

Actually, I suspect a lot of Dems will be voting for the Most Evil Republican. Michigan has a long history of crossover primaries where weird people win. The Republicans got Jesse Jackson the primary in 1988, the Dems got McCain the primary over W in 2000...

Daily Kos is urging Dems to vote for Romney in the GOP primary, figuring it hurts the Republicans to keep him as a viable candidate.

[davehogg.livejournal.com]

How does CNN figure this is "unexpected"? People have been discussing this since it became known that Clinton had stayed on the ballot while Obama and Edwards didn't.

[dionysus1999.livejournal.com]

Gee, I feel so relevant to the political process. Vote for someone I don't care that much about, or hope an "uncommitted" delegate does something good? And I used to mock other countries' political systems.

I think this would be a good time for an overall of the election process. It's broke and needs to be fixed.

[bonerici.livejournal.com]

i mean obviously hillary is going to get nearly all the votes, it's been so crazy with the new michigan primary that hardly anyone knows that if you WRITE IN Obama it is a vote against him . . . you have to click on "Uncommitted" and then like I dunno get lucky what if you don't like obama or hillary and want to vote for edwards or probably the best democratic candidate in the field mike gravel, you can't write these people in, your vote gets tossed, you have two choices, hillary or "maybe obama" if you click uncommitted, and you know what

SCREW IT

I'm staying home and my guess is, so will everyone else, except for the hillary supporters who (lucky them) are allowed to vote for their candidates. I wish the michigan democratic party had just backed down and moved the primary back, that's all, move it back, we all get our vote, stuff like this makes me despise the democratic party in michigan. It's a gigantic screw you to the people in michigan, thanks a lot.

I guess I should be glad that we are still allowed to vote in the general election. they legally are not allowed to screw that up. they would if they could.