Today's the day for the Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting that will attempt to disenfranchize all of the voters who believed what the DNC (and the candidates including Hillary said) and stayed home because they were told the election wouldn't count.
Hillary Clinton, 10-11-07:
"I signed the DNC pledge not to campaign, not to spend money in any of the states that did not comply with the rules established by the DNC.... It's clear this election they're having is not going to count for anything."
Josh Marshall makes the same point I did above ...
If the DNC were now to turn around and decide to make these contests count after all, these non-participating voters would be disenfranchised no less than the people who did turn out would be if the DNC sticks to the rules and doesn't seat any of the delegates. The simple fact is that large numbers of people, acting on accurate knowledge and in good faith, decided that there wasn't a real primary being held in their state on the day in question and on that basis decided not to participate.
Now, the question is how can we really know how many people didn't show up because they were told it wasn't a real election? There is of course no way to arrive at a direct answer, at least no practical one. But this post by Eric Kleefeld, which on a statistical analysis by Gregory P. Nini and Glenn Hurowitz, makes a very strong statistical case that as many as one million voters in Florida and probably more than a half million voters in Michigan did not vote who otherwise would have if they had not believed that the results would not be counted. Take a look.
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