The problem with Michigan and Florida, Part II: Disenfranchisement?

Fair and Free Elections:

Basic international standards of voting for free elections, citizens must have the right to choose and the freedom to speak, assembly, vote. Further candidates and parties have the same rights of assembly and speech. For elections to be fair, ballots must be honest, political parties must have the ability and time to participate in the election, and there must be a level-playing field.

Even with this base definition of free and fair elections, it is obvious the Michigan and Florida votes do not meet these criteria. In Michigan, most of the candidates were not on the ballot. In both Michigan and Florida, none of the candidates could campaign, meaning candidates could not exchange ideas (run advertising, deliver speeches), set up a ground network, get people to the polls, etc. Further, the citizens knew beforehand that the votes cast would not count meaning the election would not be honest. I am sure Putin is proud of this vote and our democratic practices.

Were the citizens who voted in Florida and Michigan disenfranchised?
The citizens of Florida have not been disenfranchised per se as they have the ability to vote and the ability to alter the meaning of the election and the primary process. Their vote was counted though it is not official; however, remember that none of the votes in any of the primaries are “official” at this point and will not be until the convention. Some of the pledged or Super Delegates could conceivable switch as some point.

If you call the voters of Florida & Michigan disenfranchised, then the voters of any losing candidate would be disenfranchised and this makes little sense.

Though law suits have been filed and more have been threatened about the elections in Florida and Michigan, throughout its history, the Supreme Court has been hesitant to involve itself in the primary process, allowing the political parties to run these events unless they prohibited citizens from participating. The Supreme Court struck down Texas primary systems because the Democratic Party refused to let black candidates and black voters participate in the process in Nixon v. Herndon, 273 U.S. 536 (1927) and Nixon v. Condon, 286 U.S. 73 (1932).

According to the First Amendment Center In the 1990s, the Supreme Court struck California’s blanket primary system, which allowed voters of all parties to cast ballots in any party’s primary (See California Democratic Party v. Jones.) Republicans wanted the Supreme Court to strike down the blanket primary because it would allow candidates to win a nomination though it may not believe in the party’s ideology, allowing for the political parties to have an ideological purity test even though it may diminish ideologically unique candidates. By June of 2008, the Supreme Court will release decisions in two more cases that involve state primaries and the political parties. These systems may fall like the one in California.