The Democrats generally love to attack the Republicans with charges of ‘disenfranchisement’ aftre elections where they feel voters were denied their rights.  Now that the DNC Rules and Bylaws committee has decided to award the Michigan and Florida delegates a one-half vote who is disenfranchised?  The voters who did vote knowing that the DNC was going to penalize their state for holding an early primary or those that didn’t vote expecting that their vote wouldn’t count?  Jake Tapper discusses this in his blog.

One talking point we’re hearing a bit more about today has to do with the Democrats in Florida and Michigan who didn’t bother voting in their state primaries because the DNC had told them their votes wouldn’t count.

Would counting the two states’ primaries not affirmatively disenfranchise these voters as surely as not counting the contests would disenfranchise those who did go to the polls?

Gregory P. Nini and Glenn Hurowitz make “a statistical comparison with turnout in other states’ primaries” and conclude that “roughly two million more people would have voted in Florida and Michigan had they expected their delegates to be seated.”

Eric Kleefeld of the liberal muckraking site Talking Points Memo takes a look at these numbers and concludes that “while the Florida primary turnout was high relative to past primaries within the state, the relative Democratic turnout vs. the Republican primary lagged way behind relative party turnout in other primaries and caucuses across the country, where the voting counted from the start. And in Michigan in particular, the voting level there was simply abysmal. This suggests the possibility that far more Democratic voters would have come out in both states if they’d expected the contests to count, meaning that it’s hard to argue that the primaries that actually took place really reflected the will of the people.”

The Democrats have only themselves to blame for their predicament. So for now the GOP can gleefully accuse the Democrats of “disenfranchising” the voters and the Democrats will have to remain largely silent or risk trying to explain how this is different than what they have accused Republicans of in the past.

 

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