Stealing votes

I was annoyed with Michigan Radio's coverage of the Michigan Primary because they only named the victors and didn't give the size of the win. I had to go digging on a news site since the actual election results story wasn't obvious. So, here we are:

GOP results:

Romney -- 39%

McCain -- 30%

Huckabee -- 16%

Dem results:

Clinton -- 55%

Uncommitted -- 40%

Kucinich -- 2% (only reported as part of exit poll data)

I'll let you peruse the articles to see how they slice-and-dice the numbers.

Alas, Michigan party rules say a candidate must get at least 15% of the vote in a district to get any delegates. With only 2% overall it is unlikely Kucinich reached that threshold anywhere.

That only matters if Michigan actually gets to send delegates to the convention. Jack Lessenberry of Metro Times has another column complaining about the mess the state Dems made of this primary. They sacrificed our vote to prove a point and failed at proving it. It's usually the GOP that is good at taking votes away. When Mich. Dems confidently claimed that Michigan was too important a swing state to not seat our delegates at the convention the national party cancelled the rooms that had been reserved for the Mich. delegation. All those "uncommitted" delegates? They go to whomever the party bosses say they go to because the party bosses select the delegates. Which means if Hillary is gracious enough to allow the Mich. contingent to be seated, party bosses would respond by selecting Hillary delegates. As for the claim that Michigan is more important than Iowa or New Hampshire in deciding the nominee and should thus go first Lessenberry has a response. Michigan is too big. It is important that small states go first because that allows candidates that aren't well funded to gain a toe-hold, something good to occasionally wrest the presidency from the rich or those willing to do corporate bidding. That's good, even though this year's low-budget candidate is Huckabee (who was outspent by Romney 20-1 and still won Iowa).