Voters Must Count

ABC News and Facebook are running one of their daily (sometimes hourly) political polls this morning with this question: Is the plan for Michigan Democrats to re-run their primary on June 3 a good idea?

So far its running about 53% to 41% against the idea. When one reads the comments accompanying most of the votes, we see that respondents are blinded by their candidate preference and treat the situation as if each individual voter had the ability to control the primary date set by their party leaders and so now should, "suffer the consequences."

That prevaling opinion misses two critical points:

1. individual voters had no control over primary dates

2. individual voters must count.

And IMHO their proxies (their party leaders) are obligated to represent the individual interests of their party members. In other words, Michigan and Florida's party leaders had an obligation to make certain that every individual voter understood the potential consequences of expediting their primary date(s). I'm not concerned at the moment how they would do that. I'm only concerned that they find a way to uphold their fiduciary duty to represent their party's individual voters.

Did they? I believe that's an open question. Do we know for a fact one way or the other? I don't. I do know this: sacrificing individual voters in the cross fire of political power struggles is simply wrong.

And there are those who've written me (already) suggesting that the voters should "learn their lession by kicking their party leaders out and putting ones in place who will do the right thing." Please. That's rather uninformed as well. Most state political parties do not have a standard election process for their party leaders... party leadership on a state-by-state basis is often handled in those "smoke filled rooms." So, no... the individual voter still has no opportunity to manage their democratic destiny.

And frankly, the candidates are not a part of this either, unless one lets their loyalty blind them into believing this is only about controlling delegate outcomes. This has (or should have) nothing to do with candidates (they had no control over the primary dates either.)

As I wrote in my opinion comment on the Facebook poll this AM:

"Its about individual voters. They should not bedisenfranchised by, or punished for, acts by their party leaders that they had no control over. And this should not be about the candidates (they had no control over primary dates either). The voters should count. Punish the leaders, not the voters."

Enough.
GAM|out

Post Note: I know I wrote last week that I would be catching up on a bunch of posts, but finding the time to blog about things when there is so much work to be done both getting the word out about our mission, and actually working on the problems, I can barely stay up with e-Mail.