Join TheLiberalOC.com and sign our petition asking California Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres to urge the Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters to count all the DTS Democratic Primary ballots.
I wrote about this on Friday here and I asked you to sign on to The Courage Campaign petition to the LA County Registrar of Voters Dean Logan. While that is important, we all need to demand that the California Democratic Party leaders do all they can to ensure that all votes in the Democratic Party Primary are counted. Democratic Party rules allow for Decline to State voters to vote in the Democratic Presidential Party Primary if they ask for a DTS ballot.
Please sign our petition and we will forward your message to California Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres.
Well Chris, I admire your call to count all those bubble ballots in LA County. It was a poorly designed ballot and the bubble wasn’t necessary as other counties demonstrated.
I suppose there is a good point that the time to have challenged this was before the election. After all, LA County used the same type of bubble ballot in the 2004 presidential election. And a certain amount of fault needs to be placed on the voters; after all, many of the D/S voters in LA simply followed instructions and filled in the bubble. But in the interests of fairness and needing to show courage, I join in your call to count ’em all even if it means we have to change the rules.
But I’d be a lot more impressed if your outrage and courage included not only an unknown potential pool in a mix of a few hundred thousand D/S voters, but the millions of people in Florida and Michigan who didn’t fail to follow instructions, who actually voted for Clinton, Obama, Edwards and the rest, and because of party hacks at the DNC are seing their votes completely washed away. The political idiocy of disenfranchising ALL the voters in 2 key battleground states is one thing. It reminds me of why Howard Dean fell by the wayside in 2004. But the disenfranchising of real primary voters is another thing indeed.
So I admire your call for counting ’em all but if you’re not also sending petitions out to count Florida and Michigan votes I’ll get a little suspicious. Like perhaps the reason that you posted this petition and the Courage Campaign is doing their thing has more to do with the fact that you all think that Obama will gain an advantage in delegates from these D/S ballots rather than your outrage at the LA machine. But since you’re generally a fair minded person I hope you’ll start a peitition to make all the votes count, whether they be in LA, Miami or Detroit.
I’m sending the following e-mail to Chairman Torres:
Dear Art:
I join in the call to urge you to demand that L.A. County count all the DTS ballots. I also urge you to call upon the Democratic National Committee to stop disenfranchising Florida and Michigan voters and award delegates based on the primary results of the millions of voters in those states. Take punitive measures against the State parties but not the voters. They didn’t mess with the DNC calendar. At least the GOP only penalized them half of their delegation.
Yours in solidarity,
Northcountystorm
Northcountystorm,
There is a problem with Michigan in that only one candidate was on the ballot. Not really representative to count the votes in a state where only one candidate (Clinton) had their name on the ballot.
As far as Florida is concerned, the Florida (and Michigan) party leaders knew the penalty when they scheduled the primary when they did. The only workable solution would be to have the two states hold DNC sanctioned caucuses, primaries, or party conventions to select the delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Denver.
I agree that Florida and Michigan should be counted, but I do not believe their non-sanctioned primary contests should count.
After the matter of the DTS votes in LA is resolved, I have no problem asking people to sign on to a petition asking the DNC to ensure that the voters in Florida and Michigan are allowed to cast votes in a sanctioned delegate selection process before the DNC convention.
Chris– I’m beginning to see the operational definition of change here: mulligans when it will benefit Barack.