Florida: the intra-Democratic fight may hurt the party
Salon.com reports: Amid the swimming pools and shuffleboards, a new sense of outrage is buzzing through condo land. Democratic activist Adele Berger began to hear about it at her regular, eight-deck rummy game in Century Village, an expansive, historically Jewish community of New York retirees. "People have been coming over and asking me, 'What's going on, Adele? What's the purpose of voting if it won't be counted?' And that's sad, that's sad."
The head of the community's Democratic club, Sophie Bock, is hearing the same thing, forcing her to reassure residents in the monthly newsletter that their presidential primary vote will count -- at least symbolically. "I am trying to make nicey-nicey, because I can't stand it when the people say, 'I don't want to vote. My vote won't be counted.'" Privately, however, she is as angry as her club members, so angry that she has even begun deleting fundraising e-mails from Howard Dean and the Democratic National Committee before reading them. ...
Such is the mood these days in Florida, where the specter of election meddling is again rearing its head. National Democrats plan to deny the state's 4.25 million registered Democrats any delegates to the 2008 National Convention as punishment for the state Legislature's decision to move the primary date to Jan. 29, one week earlier than the party rules allow, in an effort to make the Florida vote more influential. At the same time, the political leaders in four early primary states -- Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina -- have bullied the major Democratic candidates to forgo campaigning in Florida until February, effectively prohibiting voters like Bock and Berger from meeting their candidates, receiving campaign mail or even seeing a candidate advertisement on TV. "We can listen to their debates," says Bock. "But, you know, sometimes if it interferes with a card came, someone is going to play cards." -- Another election fiasco in Florida? | Salon News