Is Utah GOP Ready to Rumble? Flordia Again wants the Spotlight

Several months ago I posted a suggestion that Utah move up its Presidential Primary into January, because if they wait until Super Duper Tuesday in February, Utah will have no impact on the National Election. Because the total delegate's elected on Super Duper Tuesday will be a majority, it's very likely that the respective candidates for both parties will be chosen on this day.

So the real question is why even have a National convention? Why spend the money on a State wide election that will likely have a pre-determined outcome by the time we actually get to vote?

The national parties have said to their respective state parties we will take delegates away from you if you hold your election any sooner than Feb 5th. For Utah, who cares? The National Parties have done nothing for Utah for more than two decades, except to reap political donations for elsewhere in the country or other non Utah candidates and nearly bankrupt our State parties.Its crunch time and we need to follow Florida's example and thumb our noses at the National Parties, and dare them to follow through with their threats.

Florida Double-Dares National Parties as Jan. 29 Primary Date is Enacted
By Rachel Kapochunas Mon May 21, 4:15 PM ET

Florida Republican Gov. Charlie Crist signed a sweeping bill Monday altering the state’s electoral procedures — including a controversial provision to move the state’s 2008 presidential primary all the way up to Jan. 29 in defiance of scheduling rules set by both major parties’ national committees.

“Florida’s diverse population will be more influential in the presidential primary process,” read a statement Monday from the governor’s office.
Crist signed House Bill 537 on Monday morning at the Palm Beach County Supervisors of Elections office in West Palm Beach. The bill cleared the Republican-controlled state legislature earlier this month.

The action by Florida officialdom puts a new and contentious wrinkle into the “front-loading” frenzy, the surge of states moving their presidential contests up to dates much earlier than in the past in hopes of having greater influence over the selection of the parties’ nominees.
Both the Democratic National Committee' and (RNC) have set Feb. 5 as the earliest date for primaries and caucuses, with exceptions made only for the traditional “first in the nation” events — the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary — and a handful of other state contests. Though nearly two-dozen states have rushed to fill up the primary calendar on Feb. 5, none before Florida had scheduled an unauthorized contest prior to that date.

Florida has done so in the face of penalties threatened by the RNC and the DNC, which include confiscating some of the state’s delegates to the parties’ national conventions in late summer 2008. In addition, Democratic Party rules stipulate that any candidate who campaigns in a state that has violated Democratic scheduling rules will forfeit delegates the state retains — in effect, shutting out the state altogether.

But supporters of Florida’s move say penalties will not deter candidates from campaigning in the state, which has political influence commensurate with its status as the fourth most-populous state. And some in the large field of contenders already have signaled that those advocates are indeed correct.

The campaign for Republican Rudolph Giuliani, a former mayor of New York City and the current leader in early presidential preference polls of Republican voters, released an appeal Monday to Florida residents, reiterating his desire to win support in the state.
“Rudy Giuliani is the candidate who will win in Florida,” campaign manager Michael DuHaime said in a statement. “We have a strong and growing team on the ground, and the mayor’s optimistic vision for the country is resonating across the state.”

Despite the strong verbal pushback from national party officials, there are efforts under way to try to find a compromise in the dispute. DNC officials say they have been working with Florida Democrats in hopes of finding an alternative, such as making the primary a non-binding presidential preference poll and later holding party-run caucuses at which the actual distribution of convention delegates would be determined.
Steven A. Geller, the Democratic leader in the Florida Senate, sent a letter to DNC Chairman
Howard Dean' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Howard Dean on Thursday urging him to reconsider the threat of penalties. Geller argued that Democrats made efforts to amend the legislation but were stymied by the Republican-controlled legislature. “By threatening to punish Florida Democrats because of actions taken by Florida Republicans, it is the party as a whole which will bear the brunt of your retaliation,” Geller wrote.

The situation might be even a little more awkward on the Republican side, though. Florida Sen. Mel Martinez (news, bio, voting record) was recently installed as the RNC’s general chairman at the request of
President Bush' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> President Bush, and some have questioned whether his homestate loyalties could leave him conflicted over how to enforce penalties for the state’s violation of the party’s scheduling rules.

But Martinez, speaking for the national committee, has thus far remained firm. “The rules are inflexible and it doesn’t matter who is running the RNC,” Martinez said Friday, according to the Associated Press. “Those rules will be enforced because they are part of the rules that were crafted at the last convention and they can’t be changed.”

Ballot Quandary Arrives at Paper Trail. While the primary date change embodied in the legislation signed Monday has stirred a dispute, another major provision is aimed at avoiding the kind of vote-counting chaos that has plagued elections held in the state over recent years.
The bill will require all voting to be conducted using optical scan ballots, paper records that can be used in recounting votes in disputed elections — a requirement that will essentially require localities to ditch the touch-screen computerized voting machines that many had adopted to replace outmoded punch-card ballots.

Punch-card voting was at the center of one of the most epic vote-counting controversies in the nation’s history, which occurred in Florida during the 2000 presidential election. George W. Bush was ultimately declared the winner by a razor-thin margin, which in turn clinched his victory for the White House, though not before local election officials hand-examined many thousands of ballots to determine whether there were “hanging chads” — partially detached punchouts that might indicate an intent to cast a vote for a candidate.

Yet the touch-screen machines that were widely implemented afterwards caused a furor of their own in the 2006 House race in Florida’s 13th Congressional District.
Congress is currently investigating Democratic nominee Christine Jennings’ claim that electronic voting machine errors in Sarasota County caused her narrow defeat by Republican Rep. Vern Buchanan (news, bio, voting record) in the 13th District last November. More than 18,000 undervotes — ballots displaying no choice for the congressional race but choices for other races on the ticket — were recorded in Sarasota County, which Jennings carried.

At a press conference Monday in Sarasota, Jennings commended Crist for ending paperless voting and thanked supporters for what she believes was the nationalization of her effort to overturn the 13th District result.

“Together, we have not only helped bring about real change in Florida, we have also helped this case become central to the national debate over election reform,” Jennings said.
Democratic Rep. Robert Wexler (news, bio, voting record) of Florida’s 19th District, who has been working with Crist to eliminate paperless voting in his home state, was in attendance at the signing ceremony Monday. The legislation appropriates $27.8 million to purchase the optical scan equipment.

Among its other provisions, the bill ends the state’s current requirement that public officials resign their current positions in order to run for federal office and spells out that complaints filed with the Florida Elections Commission must be based on personal experience.