No Florida re-vote as Democrats grapple with discord
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Florida will not redo its voided US presidential primary, the state's Democratic Party announced Monday, further convoluting an agonizingly close nomination contest between rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
The latest delegate impasse heightens concern that the brawl to see who will face off against Republican nominee John McCain in November will play out on the floor of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in August, when the appearance of a divided party could hurt Democrats' chances at ousting Republicans from the White House.
"We researched every potential alternative process -- from caucuses to county conventions to mail-in elections -- but no plan could come anywhere close to being viable in Florida," Congresswoman Karen Thurman, chair of the Florida Democratic Party, said in a memo to voters.
"We made a detailed case to the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee, but we were denied."
The decision also leaves Democratic leaders scrambling over Michigan, which like Florida was stripped of its delegates to the convention because the two states violated party rules by moving the dates of their presidential primaries forward to January.
Even if Florida and Michigan's total 313 delegates were counted somehow, neither Clinton nor Obama would appear likely to cross the finish line of 2,025 delegates needed to secure the Democratic nomination.
That would leave the party's presidential nomination in the hands of "superdelegates," nearly 800 top party officials and lawmakers who can vote how they like at the convention.
Last week, amid mounting pressure to resolve one of the 2008 campaign's most divisive disputes, party officials in Florida had proposed a repeat presidential primary on June 3 that would combine mail-in ballots with in-person voting.
But Thurman said the party was swamped with thousands of responses from voters who voiced opposition to a revote, and noted that several counties "do not have the capacity to handle a major election before the June 10th DNC primary deadline."
"The consensus is clear: Florida doesn't want to vote again. So we won't," she said.
Despite the DNC punishment, Florida and Michigan held primaries even though Democratic presidential hopefuls largely respected pledges not to campaign in the two states.
Obama had his name removed from the Michigan ballot.
Clinton won resounding victories in both states amid record voter turnout, and the New York senator's campaign has said it preferred that the delegates be apportioned on the basis of the original vote -- a formula that would give Clinton a clear advantage.
The two campaigns exchanged tit-for-tat attacks on the re-vote issue Monday.
"Today's announcement brings us no closer to counting the votes of the nearly 1.7 million people who voted in January," Clinton campaign spokesman Phil Singer said.
"We hope the Obama campaign shares our belief that Florida's voters must be counted and cannot be disenfranchised."
Democrats are haunted by the prospect of denying a voice to voters in Florida, the battleground state that controversially decided the 2000 presidential election.
Clinton is narrowly behind in the delegate count but says she deserves the nomination because she has won the most populous states including California and New York, and having Florida count in her win column would boost that argument.
Prior to Florida's announcement, Obama said Monday he hoped a fair solution to Florida and Michigan could be worked out but that he would "leave it up to the DNC."
"The key idea is that the delegates in Michigan and Florida be seated ... in a way that is fair for both the campaigns," he said on public television station PBS.
Clinton's campaign on Monday demanded a revote in Michigan as well, prompting a fiery response from Obama's campaign, which accused Clinton of "cynically trying to change the rules at the eleventh hour for her benefit" after acknowledging in January that the Michigan primary didn't count.
