Florida Primary
Update: I finally located the Official Returns link, that isn’t on the Division of Elections page because people might look at it if they could find it. 😈
The Florida primary is today and everyone needs to go to the polls and vote, even if the Democratic National Committee doesn’t recognize the votes. because the Republicans have a nasty tax cut on the ballot that needs to be defeated. The only people who will be helped by Amendment 1 are the same old group that has been helped by several earlier measures. New homeowners get nothing from it, and the state legislature is setting up the school districts for another funding cut, forcing the districts to either reduce services in our already marginal system, or raise school property taxes. It’s the Reagan tax fake – the guys at the top cut taxes forcing the guys below them to raise taxes to make up the lost revenue.
The Florida tax code needs to be rewritten, not patched, but the legislature doesn’t want to do the work.
A number of people have been lumping Florida and Michigan together because both states moved their primaries and the Democratic National Committee took away all of the delegates from both states. The situations are not the same.
Michigan has a Democratic governor and Democrats control the lower house of the legislature, with the Republicans controlling the upper house. Either party could have stopped the change from taking place, but they both agreed to it.
In Florida the Republicans control everything, and the Republicans changed the date. There was nothing the Democratic Party of Florida could do about it. It would be an understatement to say a lot of Florida Democrats are not happy about being punished for a Republican action and the national party is not exactly popular. I hope the national committees are able to make up the money they won’t get from Florida with contributions from in Iowa and New Hampshire.
On a happier note, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida who claims to be a Democrat was absent yesterday and unable to vote with the Republicans on the “get out of jail free” card for the telecommunications companies and Bush administration. Chris Dodd proves he is a leader by standing up for the Fourth Amendment, and Senators Obama and Clinton managed to find the Senate and vote with the Democratic Party.
[Cross posted at American Street yesterday, and scheduled for primary day]
7 comments
This whole Florida and Michigan thing is really going to be a problem come convention time.
It’s a mess and I don’t know what they can do. The entire primary process is a mess and should be overhauled, but the parties can’t force the states to do anything in particular. All of the plans for rotating primaries are dependent on states being willing to change, and I don’t see that happening as some have the election schedule in their constitution, not a separate law.
cool! thanks for the returns link.
Thank you for that link for the results. I’ll be checking it all evening. I think it sucks that the DNC is allowed to discount Florida’s votes. In fact, I think it’s &#%( bullshit!
I won’t be watching the Dem vote in Florida. I just want Rudy to come in fourth.
I think I found it on page two of the search results, Hipparchia. They really need to hire some IT people in the state government.
It was to be expected, Catnapping. When you’re a Florida voter you expect to get screwed over on election days.
I don’t know if he can hold on to fourth, Kevin, Ron Paul and none of the above have strength in the Panhandle. Wait for the Huckabee surge late, because his strength is in North Florida and the Panhandle half of which is in the Central Time Zone and many counties are sparsely populated and do hand counts.
[…] covered some of this before, but let me expand a […]