A FAIR SOLUTION TO MICHIGAN'S DELEGATE PROBLEM

I've been giving a bit of thought to the problem of seating Michigan's delegates and how to count our popular votes in a way that would be fair to both sides. And I believe I may have a solution.

The biggest obstacle I see is that there is really no way to be sure how the vote would have turned out had our illustrious representatives here in Michigan left it alone and not violated the DNC rules. Any re-vote is hard to accept because the dynamics have been changed by their monkey-business. It's funny how every scenario offered by our Michigan DNC chair, Mark Brewer (who supports Clinton) or backed by our Governor Jennifer Granholm (who supports Clinton) all seem to benefit Clinton. Hmmm, I wonder why that is?

There is simply no way a re-vote could have been fair to Barack. No matter how you dice it, Obama was not on the ballot the first time around and didn't campaign. Given that fact, you have to factor in the people who, because Barack wasn't on the ballot, crossed over to the Republican side to vote for McCain or Ron Paul or Romney or whoever. Not to mention those people who may have changed their minds by the time the second vote came, who might be up to mischief given the changed dynamics, and on and on . Since we had to declare our party to vote in the primary here in Michigan, some of those people would not have been allowed to re-vote in a closed Democrat Primary. Clearly that's a benefit for Clinton. Any attempt to put a number on those people would be a guess at best. Letting the numbers stand as is, is to ignore that Barack wasn't even on the ballot. So what can we do?

My solution would be to take the results of the border states of Michigan; Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Ohio and average their percentages for both Hillary and Barack. Then, we take those percentages and seat the delegates accordingly. All those states have very similar demographics and Midwest State concerns. In fact, if you didn't know better, it would be very hard to tell if I had dropped you off in downtown Milwaukee, Gary, Chicago, Detroit or Cincinnati. We all talk the same, act the same and carry about the same values. After you have figured out the percentages, you then take the total amount of people in Michigan that voted in the primary and divide them to each candidate according to that percentage.

In fact, here are the numbers all according to Realclearpolitics.com a universally accepted source. Ohio went for Clinton 55.2% to 44.8%, Wisconsin went for Obama 58.1% to 40.8%, Illinois went for Obama 64.7% to 31.9%, and Indiana went for Clinton 50.9 % to 49.1%. That means, on average, Clinton scored 44.7% and Obama got 54.2%. Note that even if you threw in Pennsylvania, which Clinton also won, it still ends up favoring Obama 52.4% to 46.7%. Throwing in New York would be vastly unfair as it is Hillary's home state and is farther away than all the other states. No matter how you spin this, it becomes apparent that Barack Obama would have done far better than Hillary Clinton is trying to claim.

What could be fairer? The numbers are based on similar states that weren't gerryrigged, that were all campaigned in fairly by both candidates, without any advantage to any one candidate (remember, even though Illinois is Barack's home state, it was also Hillary's birth state, a fact she used when campaigning there.) It even gives full credit to the people who voted here in Michigan. I'm sure Hillary's people will never accept this idea as it robs her of her well-planned-out attempt to rig an election. But if you look at it with an open mind, you'll see it's the most fair of all the suggestions. H.C.