Should Mich. and Fla. count, or should Clinton play by the rules?
In the dawn after the Kentucky and Oregon primaries, let’s not talk about them, OK? Instead, let’s focus on the bigger picture. By some accounts, Sen. Hillary Clinton’s accounts in particularly, she is leading in the popular vote — as long as you count the votes in Michigan and Florida.
As you may recall, the Democratic Party penalized those two states by stripping them of their delegates for moving up the dates of their Democratic primaries.
At the time, Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama were not the only Democrats in the race. Neither of them campaigned hard in those large states, knowing that the Democratic Party rules had rendered their votes moot.
In fact, Obama’s name wasn’t even on the ballot in Michigan when voters went to the polls.
And meanwhile, there is a key vote within the Democratic National Committee on May 31. The party’s rules committee will vote on whether, indeed, those states should be allowed to seat full delegations at the Democratic convention.
By the time most of us see this, Obama could have enough delegates to secure the nomination. But the question we’ll debate is this: Should Florida and Michigan count? Is Clinton trying to change the rules after the game?


Kurt is the director of social media for the Post-Dispatch, where he has worked since August 2002. He's been a journalist since 1982, covering municipal government, courts, education and two hurricanes as a reporter before becoming an editor.
Log on to “VoteNader.Org.”, if you can even contribute $25.00 to the Nader campaign, that is enough to clear your mind and clense your soul and you will not be worrying about all of this other stuff.
To all the people who say stuff like “the rules are the rules,” what “rules” have Iowa and NH been playing by over the last SEVERAL elections? I thought “Separate but Equal” went out the window in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, but it looks like it is alive and well in 2008. Iowa and NH are considered separate but ostensibly equal from the other 48 states by the DNC.
count all votes
Count everyone’s vote period.
Clinton play by the rules?!? When pigs fly.