So far the DNC has declared Florida and Michigan, whose state legislatures have rescheduled their presidential primaries to January, will not be allowed to seat their delegates at the Democratic National Convention. But the RNC, AFAIK, has taken no such action, even though the state legislation in question applies to both parties’ primaries equally. Why the difference?
I thought the RNC halved Florida’s delegates.
ETA: and as in so many other things, I was right
My Google-fu is not strong today . . .
Anyway, the question remains: Why the difference?
(And, for that matter, why does either national committee care?)
Could it be that the Pubs fear being accused of disenfranchising poor folks and the Dems know they won’t be?
There’s no apparent relationship between a state’s poverty level and its primary date.
What does that have to do with what Republicans might be accused of?
Meh. The delegates will be restored shortly after the nomination is clinched, whoever it is. Can’t cause bad feelings or other distractions at the pep-rally conventions, can we?
Well, they might be accused of anything, but I doubt anyone would see such an accusation as credible, since 1) the Dems are doing the same thing, 2) Unless the GOP primary voters of FL are for some reason much poorer then their peers in other states (I imagine the opposite is true), taking away all of FL’s delegates isn’t really going to give the poor less of a say in the name of the Republican nominee, it’ll just give Floridians in general less of a say.
The Republicans are planning on halfing the delegates for New Hampshire, Florida, South Carolina, Michigan, and Wyoming.
http://www.wwj.com/pages/1119311.php?
RNC rules say that no states can select delegates before February 5th, under penalty of losing half their delegates. (Iowa, Nevada, and Maine, being caucuses, don’t actually select their delegates the day of the caucus, and so are exempt)
The RNC response is different because the DNC and RNC are different organizations with different convention rules. Why would you expect them to respond the same?
Doesn’t this penalty by the DNC risk alienating Florida Democrats, and perhaps might reduce Democrat voting in the general election? It was a Republican state government that changed the primary date, after all.
Yea, if memory serves, Dem candidates are also forbidden from campaigning there for the primaries, which is hurting local Dem groups that would normally be helped by hosting visiting candidates (I think this was from a link BG posted in another thread, but I can’t find it now, perhaps he’ll link it again here). It is a little bizarre that the National Councils weren’t able to cut some sort of deal with the state legislatures that were making this move earlier. Having this spat with the states seems to do a lot of harm to both sides, while preserving a system which doesn’t seem, to me, to have any obvious advantages. While I understand wanting to spread out the primaries, and perhaps have some smaller states go first, I haven’t heard a good explanation of why the Parties are so invested in having NH and Iowa in particular be first every year. Someone suggested moving to a rotating scheme in one of the earlier threads, which seems a good compromise to me.