It is also a party rule that requires the Democratic Party of Florida to participate in the Florida primary, and those rules can only be changed at the scheduled party convention. There is no time to do anything between the state convention and the national convention, so Florida voters can’t hold a vote or caucus or anything else. They are just disenfranchised by the Republicans with the assistance of the DNC. If changing rules was so easy, the DNC could have avoided this problem, but they can’t change their rules until the national convention and Florida can’t change theirs until the state convention. If there was an easy solution, there wouldn’t be a problem.

The DNC has a legal right to do what they want, and voters in Florida have the right not to contribute money, time, or votes to the Democratic Party, which is exactly what a lot of people, like myself, have decided to do.

Caucus states are states where the government isn’t funding a primary, which is why the rules in caucus states are even more screwed up than the rules in primary states. If a law was passed saying all parties had to have their primary on a certain day if they received any government funding for the primary, the parties could very well say “fine, we won’t participate in your primaries”, fold up their tents, and hold caucuses instead. And the Constitution says there isn’t a thing that could be done about it if they decided to do so.

BTW, I disagree with your contention that the Democrats in Florida should not be punished for the early primary. The Florida Democratic Party could have told the Republican Party, “fine, you hold your primary on December 7, but we’re gonna hold our caucus on March 15 to decide who gets delegates to the national convention.” The state can’t *force* the party to participate in a primary. The most the state can do is say, “*if* you’re going to accept public funding for a primary, here’s the date it’s going to happen on.” The party has every legal right to say “fine, you can stuff your primary up your butthole” and go off and hold a caucus instead. But the Florida Democratic Party didn’t do that… they just went ahead with their too-early primary and made no plans for a caucus to pick actual real delegates to the convention. Oh well. Because the Democratic Party is a voluntary association that determines its own rules for membership, not a government body, they have every legal right to decide “we won’t accept delegates from Florida”, no matter how much it irritates Florida Democrats…

Let’s have real parties, or just scrap the whole idea.

This is about a party primary, and participation should be limited to the party.

Frankly I wish we had a real progressive party and some place for the Christianists to call home. We need a warmongers party and corporatists party: labels that have real political meaning that doesn’t change with every new fad.

Who cares how many want to run? Only serious candidates will get the votes. I don’t want to spend time or money on primaries, I want to concentrate both on the real election.

Independents have to file with individual states, there is no Federal role in getting names on the ballot. State parties still have to get the name of the party’s candidate on the ballot in each individual state in accordance with the laws of that state.

My sole concern is the process the party uses to select that candidate.

We could do the same for independents. Anybody that isn’t affiliated with a party, or who wants to run as an independent, can file with the FEC, pay a slightly higher fee, and has to rack up more endorsements. Then anybody who chooses not to ask for a partisan ballot (of whatever flavor) can ask for an “independent” ballot. We might get a few good candidates that way, too.