Democratic dilemma: How do you count what wasn't supposed to count?
Party leaders work on how to allocate delegates from Michigan and Florida, which were punished for holding their primaries too early. Figuring that out feels like the 2000 election all over again.
Washington -- The overarching question at today's Democratic Party hearing on disputed primary elections was whether Hillary Rodham Clinton would emerge with any greater hopes for becoming her party's nominee for president.
But for people listening to the day-long hearing, it was a peek under the hood of democracy -- and at one of its fundamental questions: How do you measure the will of the people?
It sounds simple. Even schoolchildren know how to hold a student council election: One kid, one vote.
But Saturday's debate over how to treat the results of the Michigan and Florida primaries -- which could give Clinton's troubled campaign an 11th hour boost -- showed how messy the process can get.
Elections are driven by rules, which can change in mid-game. Voters may give ambiguous answers to simple questions, such as which candidate they prefer. The day was reminiscent of the civics lesson of 2000, when the presidential vote recount forced the nation to come to grips with the concept of "hanging chads."
The Clinton camp argued that the results of the Michigan and Florida primaries should be honored -- even though voters there were told that the results would not count, because the states had violated party rules by holding their primaries too early.
``Let's count every vote!" was the Clinton rallying cry.
Barack Obama's allies argued that those results did not fairly reflect the will of the people. Obama had followed the party's edict and did not campaign in either state; his name did not even appear on the ballot in Michigan.
Allan Katz, an Obama supporter and rules committee member from Florida, called it an ``Alice in Wonderland election."
``People running for president were not on the ballot; the one who won said it didn't count," said Katz.
In 2000, Florida officials were left to divine the will of voters who had not properly completed their ballots. On Saturday, the questions about voter intent were almost metaphysical.
As the only major candidate on the Michigan ballot, Clinton won that primary with 55% of the vote. How many of her voters would have chosen someone else if another choice was available?
About 40% of Michigan voters chose ``uncommitted." How many of them intended to vote for Obama?
And while 1.75 million Democrats voted in the Florida primary, Katz took pains to note that closer to 3 million would have voted had there been a true campaign in the state. By implication, he was asking how to honor the intent of the people who stayed home.
