Was the Michigan January election fair and legitimate?

[Mr. Morden]

We should retroactively make every straw poll count towards awarding delegates.  Because after all, people voted, right?  Who cares what the rules were at the time of the voting?  As long as people are voting, those votes should count towards deciding the nomination, no matter whether the candidates and potential voters were told at the time that it would count, right?

[Mr. Morden]

It was about as fair and legitimate as the GOP's Iowa straw poll last August, in that it was understood to be a nonbinding "beauty contest" at the time, and both candidates and voters decided on whether to participate or not accordingly.

[Mr. Morden]

What would be unfair is if a party penalized some States more than was called for in the rules, while waiving penalties for others, and prevented candidates from campaigning.

I agree with you in that it was completely unfair of the DNC to punish FL & MI while letting IA & NH off the hook.  But, in assessing whether we should view a particular election as free and fair, don't we have to consider what the rules were at the time those votes were cast?  While the DNC should have punished IA & NH, they didn't.  While the DNC shouldn't have held FL & MI to a different standard, they did make it clear **at the time those primaries were held** that the results wouldn't count for anything, and both the candidates and the voters acted accordingly.  So is it now fair to retroactively say that yes, it should count after all?

[Mr. Morden]

MI Dem Chair Mark Brewer - it was his idea - and he's the one who forced the Rep. Senators into it saying, "we can hold a private primary because we have money and you can't" (it's true - MI GOP is broke), and the Reps said, well, we'd rather have the people chose and get 1/2 the delegates than have a caucus like Wyoming.

I don't think the Michigan GOP really cared much about losing half their delegates.  Since all the recent nomination contests have been decided as soon as one candidate reached a critical mass of momentum, they were more than happy to gain influence on early momentum in exchange for giving up half their delegates.

[Mr. Morden]

Originally it was a big deal to some.

In every single state that's been sanctioned, the party officials in the state complain loudly about the delegate sanctions, but the vast majority of them will still gladly take the tradeoff....vote earlier in exchange for giving up delegates.  The only time it's really not worth it for them to make the tradeoff is, for example, in the case of FL & MI on the Dem. side this year, since they lost 100% of the delegates and the candidates didn't even campaign there.

In the case of FL & MI on the GOP side, it was surely worth it for them to move up their primaries.  Florida, in fact, may well have been the pivotal state.  No way that would have happened if they'd voted on Feb. 5th or later.

[Mr. Morden]

If Hillary Clinton had campaigned in those states, she'd be mocked mercilessly by for being the only candidate to do so, and for defying the DNC.....

Except that the sanctions that the DNC ultimately put on FL & MI didn't say anything about not campaigning there.  The reason the candidates pledged not to campaign there wasn't to appease the DNC.  It was to appease IA, NH, NV, & SC (the "four state pledge"), who didn't want the candidates' attention diverted to FL & MI.