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Sunday, 10/07/2007 8:32:35 PM

Sunday, October 07, 2007 8:32:35 PM

Post# of 867
from DAYTONA news journal...


For Democrats, winning lawsuit could seem a lot like losing

By MARK LANE
FOOTNOTE

Sen. Bill Nelson has been saying for months that he would do it, and Thursday he went ahead and did it.

Joined by U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Miramar, and Hendry County Commissioner Janet Taylor, he is asking the federal courts to blow apart the existing dysfunctional primary system.

"It's a case of fundamental rights versus party rules," Nelson said.

The suit, which brings up the 2000 recount in its second sentence, characterizes the Democratic National Committee's sanctions against Florida as "disenfranchisement on a massive scale." The suit alleges sweeping "geographic discrimination" against Sunshine State voters.

Well, good luck. I'm no lawyer, but it doesn't look as though the case law is on their side. But that's not to say they're wrong.

Past federal rulings have treated political parties as not so different from Elks Clubs or PTAs -- private clubs free to make their own rules, police their membership and elect their own officers. An Elks Club or PTA that also gets to decide whether your primary vote counts in any meaningful way.

If Florida chose its governors the way we choose presidents, the process would start with caucuses -- but not a primary vote -- in Santa Rosa County. There, about 10 percent of the electorate (which is 95 percent white) would take part in a time-consuming process that requires people to show their candidate preference by standing in different parts of the room.

This would be followed by a more conventional primary in Okaloosa County.

After Santa Rosa and Okaloosa counties winnow the field, then two mid-size counties would vote. Counties with the state's major cities would only vote after the four counties made their decisions. And everything would be already decided by the time Miami-Dade, Hillsborough or Volusia counties voted.

Anybody proposing such a bizarre run-off system would be considered a lunatic. Picking nominees by holding a televised dance-off with a viewer call-in vote would make about as much sense.

Yet that's how we select our presidential nominees.

The tactical geniuses running the Democratic Party consider the preservation of this system so vital that they are perfectly willing to alienate Democratic voters, activists and organizations in the 46 states without sanctioned early primaries. And they are particularly bent on making Florida Democrats as angry as possible.

No wonder the Florida Republican Party sees this controversy as an excellent recruiting tool.

Nelson's suit is likely to go nowhere. He's making some pretty sweeping due-process arguments that would turn the nominating system upside down if accepted. Courts as a rule do not like to turn political systems upside down and tend to find excellent reasons why they cannot.

Still, winning a legal battle to ensure Florida Democratic votes don't count is not the kind of victory the Democratic Party will want to advertise.

It's the kind of victory that would not be softened by a one-time decision to go ahead and seat Florida's delegates to the national convention, just this once.

It's the kind of victory that would cement the Democrats' current status as the No. 2 political party in Florida.

Why this does not matter to the national party is something I'm at a loss to explain.





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