Proposal for Florida and Michigan

As you know I am a Florida Democrat, and as such have been rattling my noodle for a solution to the delegate problem in my state, as well as that in Michigan.

I sent the following to my friends in the political consulting community this morning.... I would love to hear back from people as to how they feel about this idea as I am very serious about pursuing it. The results in Florida and Michigan may be a farce, but there is no reason that the voices of the people of these two pivotal swing states shouldn't be heard.

An all mail in and online based primary. Oregon votes exclusively by mail and the DNC did online voting for Democrats abroad. We could allow voters to submit applications via 800 number, email, snail mail, or website. This is much cheaper and easier to organize than a caucus (thus disposing of the fears of one candidate who doesn't caucus well). Furthermore, since any slate of delegates is ultimately approved by the state party convention and this is not a government sanctioned election there is no need to involve the secretary of state's apparatus beyond what would be necessary or practicable.

The election last month drew 1.5 million voters. Remember that this number was inflated by a very hot statewide property tax amendment and in addition, that slot machines were on the Miami Dade ballot. If you take the 1.5 million voters who voted in the original primary and throw in a premium of another 500,000 voters because of the hype, we end up with 2 million voters looking to cast ballots. Therefore if you figure a cost for postage, printing , administrative, and processing on the high side at $1.25 per voter you get a cost of $2.5 million, which is significantly less than the $4 million that has been estimated as the cost of a caucus. We can allocate another $1.5 million against the cost of Michigan. (These numbers are overly inflated but I figured I'd be generous to make a point.)

Published reports show that the DNC is willing to put up money to defray part of the costs for this so that means that at the most all that needs to be raised is 2-3 million dollars to cover the difference for both states. Keep in mind that this is a situation where there is no limit on contributions and there are a very motivated group of donors nationally who want to see a legitimate result out of Florida and Michigan. There are also a pool of voters who did vote (because of other issues on the ballot) but who subsequently selected their beauty contest candidate and not a nominee since they saw this as a chance to vote for an Edwards, Kucinich, or candidate who had already dropped out. Ultimately, the original results have legal issues which unless ignored can provide leverage for enacting this kind of solution.

There are numerous voters in both states who did not cast ballots because they were told the elections were nothing more than beauty contests by the national and state party as well as by the news media and the candidates themselves. These voters could conceivably file suit to block seating of the delegates. This could be used to either force the hands of the parties that be or as a further justification of why this has to take place. I was hoping to get some feedback from you all and see if you think this is worthwhile to pursue. I can get the web presence built out to get the donation machine flowing very quickly and in such a way that it can be grown out over time to accommodate additional information and promotion to the site.

This is a great opportunity to fix this before it gets out of hand and so I am willing to dedicate whatever I have to so please let me know. This can be plunked on to the back end of the calendar in late may and early June so that this becomes more of a formality if not necessary but also leaving plenty of time for candidates to campaign in both states. I have floated this trial balloon around the sunshine state and this definately has a lot of voter interest. $10 from 300,000 people solves this (or more from less :) ).

Arnie