Clinton Gets Voting Rights Fever

MARCH 20, 2008 — -- Having long pushed, unsuccessfully, for the disqualified Florida and Michigan primaries to count, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., is now advocating revotes in those states.

Her path to the Democratic presidential nomination becomes much tougher without one of those scenarios happening, though it does not currently look like either one will.

Demonstrating the first law of vote counting -- politicians who are trailing get voting rights fever -- Clinton swooped into Detroit, Wednesday, to push suffrage for the Wolverine and Sunshine states.

"Sen. [Barack] Obama speaks passionately on the campaign trail about empowering the America people," Clinton said. "Today I'm urging him to match those words with actions to make sure the people of Michigan and Florida have a voice in this election."

Florida and Michigan disobeyed Democratic Party rules and held their contests early. The party punished those states by not recognizing their delegations and candidates agreed not to campaign in either state before their primaries. Clinton won both contests, but they did not count; Obama had even taken his name off the Michigan ballot.

But with Obama currently leading Clinton by 128 delegates, those combined 368 Florida and Michigan delegates -- which the party currently does not recognize -- are more important than would have been predicted.

Clinton needs them to narrow the gap and to help press her case to superdelegates that she's the stronger general election candidate who can win big industrial states.

Two Clinton-backing governors, Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania and Jon Corzine of New Jersey, have even lined up donors to help pay for the contest because Michigan's and Florida's governors say the states will not foot the bill.

But officials from both states now say that revotes seem unlikely.

Brian Schaffner of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University says the numbers are not adding up for Clinton.

"You can never say never, but it's close to too late," Schaffner said. "Certainly if neither Michigan nor Florida revotes, it seems very unlikely that she could catch up in terms of pledged delegates."