Democratic candidates for their party’s nomination for president of the United States had to make a decision to determine whether the Democratic National Committee is more important than the voters in Florida and Michigan. Those two states decided they didn’t like being slow to get to the polls and moved their primary dates forward, to bring them ahead of New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada in the country’s primaries.
Florida recently approved moving its primary to January 29 and Michigan moved its primary election to January 15. The National committee has condemned to moves, which goes against its direction to hold primaries no earlier than February 5. The committee has promised to remove all eligible electoral votes from those states if they do not change the primary dates.
Democrat candidates see the lack of electoral votes as an incentive to spend their time and money campaigning in a state that matters, as far as the total electoral votes available. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards have signed letters agreeing to stay out of those states on campaign trips. Most Republican candidates have also stated they would refrain from those two states and the National Republican Party has threatened similar actions against the states.
According to USA Election Polls (USAElectionPolls.com), Edwards has an overall standing of 14% at this time and has a steady hold in the Southern and Western states. His progress is growing steadily.
The quandary for the candidates is how upset are the voters going to be in January when they go to cast their presumably meaningless ballot for the presidential nomination without the candidates having been in their state exchanging handshakes and kissing babies. Perhaps as far as most of the candidates may be concerned, if their votes don’t count now, who they vote for won’t matter. At least not until November, 2008.
