This Is Not My Battle!

You may be saying to yourself, this is not my state or, even, this is not my political party; so why should I bother with it?  Good question and one that deserves a good explanation.

Not My State: First, I ask that you look at the history of this bill and the background (see HB537 & Detail links above). If you do, you will immediatly see that the legislative Democrats in the state of Florida had no other alternative than to let the HB537 pass the state legislature. This law changed the primary election dates by legislative proclamation, long before it ever completely passed through the legislative process.  And, there isn't anything that the voters or the Democratic legislators could have done to change this.

If you are a Democrat, you need to ask yourself if you live in a state that has a large legislative democratic majority?  If not this exact same thing could happen to you also.  If you do, ask yourself if things will always be this way in your home state.  Currently, Republicans have also lost convention delegates in the state of Florida.  Granted, they lost only 50%, but they still have disenfranchised Republicans voters in the state of Florida.

Not My Party: You have to ask yourself if this type of situation could be used repeatedly to manipulate an honest and fair primary election process, regardless of party affiliation.  In states where there is a significant legislative voting majority, it could be done easily. 

Possible Solutions: One possible way to eliminate the chance of it happening again is to get a national governmental mandate that would not allow states to change their primary dates unless some predefined national legislative process has been completed. Since this would be the national government dictating policy to the states, I am not sure that this would be possible. The second possible solution is to have the federal government mandate that the National Committees for each party would allow primary election dates to be changed, if that has been legislatively mandated by changes to state law, only in states where there is a significant legislative majority in a single party .