Michigan and Florida rulings.

The Democratic National Committee has reached an agreement regarding seating delegates from Michigan and Florida. Delegates will be awarded half votes.

I disagree with the ruling. While I don't take the disenfranchisement of voters lightly, I still do not believe that the votes should be counted.

The problem that I have is this: Why are the voters of Michigan and Florida taking the DNC to task when they should be holding their state governments accountable? It was, after all, their state governments, their elected representatives, who were responsible for the disenfranchisement of their votes.

According to rules set by the party (well in advance of the 2008 primary season and well in advance of knowing who the choices in candidates would be), no states except Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina were allowed to hold their primaries before February 5. This was not some kind of secret; officials in all states were aware of this. Both Michigan and Florida chose to break this rule, moving their primaries in advance of this deadline, and were warned that if they did so, their delegates would be stripped at the national convention. Yet, both states did so, anyway.

Before the Michigan primary on January 15, the prominent candidates (including Hillary Clinton) pledged to remove their names from the ballots and abstain from campaigning, in order to respect the integrity of party rules. The Michigan ballots ultimately listed four choices: Hillary Clinton, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, or "uncommitted." With Kucinich and Gravel in relative obscurity, Clinton won, and "uncommitted" came in second. (Kucinich came in third and Gravel came in fourth.) Barack Obama and John Edwards, the other popular choices, weren't even listed on the ballot and had not campaigned.

Two weeks later, Florida held its primary on January 29. Obama and Edwards were listed on the ballot, but had not campaigned in the state, unlike Clinton. Again, Clinton won.

With two candidates remaining in the race, the question is, would the results have been different for Obama, had his name been listed on the Michigan ballot? Would the results have been different in Florida if he had actively campaigned there? You can bet that it would have been, but in hindsight, there is no way to know exactly how the results would have been different if this or that. Reaching an agreement in order to award delegates to Clinton and Obama rings false and renders that voting process fairly meaningless, anyway.

But the answer is not to fault the DNC. If voters want the rules changed, then they should protest their own elected representatives' choices. These representatives need to answer directly to their voters, both because of the moral standard of civic duty and because of the self-centered standard of their own personal political careers (after all, if the people who vote for them to keep their jobs are unhappy, then they won't be keeping their jobs). These representatives are a part of the party and it is then up to them to use their influence to change party rules. And sure, private citizens should absolutely also write letters to party officials in Washington, D.C. to express their dissatisfaction with party rules.

This is the process of political change. We work within the system to expose the flaws of the system. But if rules regarding a specific process can be changed in the midst of that process, then the rules are meaningless. It's like playing a board game and changing the rules as soon as you start to lose. Any elementary schooler can tell you how unfair and how little sense that makes.