Stand Up And Be Counted--When Your Number Is Called
It’s old news by now that Michigan and Florida voters are not, currently, being counted towards the Democratic presidential primaries, although the superdelegates from those states are. The exclusion stems from decisions by Florida and Michigan, who decided to advance their primaries in the calendar.
Such a move holds a tempting appeal: early primaries exert a disproportional influence on the elections. An early lead is an important advantage among the candidates, attracting free advertising in the form of news coverage and scoring voters in later primaries, who often get behind the front runner as a gesture of solidarity, or in the belief that the front-runner has more support, and therefore is more electable in the general election. Candidates, eager to take an early lead, must cater to states holding early primaries, making early promises to win these states; Iowa and New Hampshire get a lot of attention for this very reason, and have a powerful ability to set the national agenda. Michigan and Florida, coveting this power, tried to take it for themselves, leapfrogging other states with unilateral decisions to hold early primaries.
Unfortunately for Michigan and Florida, the national Democratic party had some rules in place against just such a move, and for very good reasons.
First, gaining influence over the national elections through early primaries can only come at the expense of the current early states. Michigan and Florida weren’t aiming to have an early say too; they sought to have the early say instead of Iowa and New Hampshire. From the national perspective, Michigan and Florida deserve no particular status.
Second, this kind of influence acts as a counterweight to sheer size. Together, California, New York, Florida, Illinois, and Texas account for almost half the electoral votes in the general election. Small states may have more electoral votes per capita, thanks to the two they get for Senate seats, but their actual power is much, much smaller per capita because of the curious way that actual power depends on the probability that a voting block will constitute a tipping point. If California jumps left instead of right, the chances are very high that they will change the election’s result; if Wyoming does, they are unlikely to have any impact, far less likely per Wyoming voter than California is per Californian voter. The national party has an interest in making sure that smaller states’ voices are heard, and concentrating early primaries in small states representative of the nation as a whole ensures that they are. Large states get the candidates’ attention regardless of when their primaries are held; small states that come late in the game are almost entirely ignored.
Third, if Michigan and Florida are allowed to move their own primaries up on their own initiative, there is nothing preventing other states from doing the same, in a race for ever-earlier primaries. Very early primaries hurt the party by stifling insurgent candidates. As candidates continue to campaign, voters get a better idea of what they are like, and sometimes decide they like someone else better than the early front-runner, and insurgent candidates that affect the voters this way are far more likely to win the general election than an early success that voters slowly realize they don’t care for. Front-loaded primaries force the public to choose between candidates before getting a chance to look them over.
Knowing that the national party has good reason to discourage calendar pilfering, and knowing full well that rules were in place to discourage it, and knowing full well what the penalties were for doing so, Michigan and Florida went ahead and did it anyway, daring the national party to offend Michigan and Florida voters by enforcing the rules. Unfortunately for these two states, the national party did so, and the national party will not be counting these states’ tallies in selecting a presidential candidate.
Understandably, Michigan and Florida voters are angry. Sensitive to this anger, Howard Dean and some other figures in the National Democratic Convention (NDC) are thinking about rewriting the rules to count Michigan and Florida in some fashion. Hilary Clinton, having broken her agreement not to campaign in either of these states, naturally outperformed her rivals in both states’ quasi-primaries, and is eager for just such a decision, abruptly realizing—only after winning—that her own agreement to exclude claim-jumping states is undemocratic…or at least it is in whichever claim-jumping states vote for her.
As wrong as it is that Michigan and Florida voters not be recognized, changing the rules mid-game to include them would be even more wrong. Just as corporations can only really be held to account through threats to their bottom line, political organizations can only really be made to live by the rules through threats to their political influence. Michigan and Florida can (and did) still hold their primaries, even if the results don’t matter, and Michigan and Florida voters retain their constitutional right to vote in the general election, but they have de facto been stripped of power in the primary—precisely what they selfishly sought to do to the rest of the country. It’s only just.
If Michigan and Florida voters are angry, let them blame their state leaders for breaking the rules, instead of blaming the NDC for upholding the rules, as though that somehow treats the voters unfairly. They, or at least their state leaders, knew the rules, and broke them anyway, arrogant in their belief that no one would dare live up to their own commitments at Michigan’s and Florida’s expense. If they’re angry enough, Michigan and Florida voters will find new state representatives, preferably ones with some political ethics. While we’re at it, let Clinton be held to her own agreements. We in the rest of the nation could do with representatives who show political ethics, too.