Apr. 1, Feature - A new proposal was offered to seat Michigan's delegates. The idea offered by Representative Bart Stupak of Michigan suggested that a portion of the delegates be sat according to the January 15th primary results. The rest would be allocated based on the national outcome. This is one of several ideas for the delegates.

Hillary Clinton's campaign is still pushing for a re-vote, not only in Michigan, but in Florida as well. Her campaign realizes that one of the few ways she could win the nomination is with big wins in those states. The Clinton campaign says Obama is holding up the re-vote. But as Dori Smith reports, state election officials are worried about cost and difficulty with holding elections.

Even after top election officials in Florida and Michigan said it was logistically impossible to hold new primaries, Hillary Clinton's Deputy Communications Director Phil Singer was insisting that they could still pull it off:

"If the Obama campaign were to come out and forcefully say that they wanted to see a new vote in both Michigan and Florida there would be a way to make it happen."

Clinton Communications Director Howard Wolfson turned the problem into an opportunity to claim Barack Obama was against voter participation.

"Senator Obama claims to be for maximum participation and yet he has been actively involved in a systematic effort to disenfranchise voters in Florida and Michigan."

In Leon County Florida, Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho said Barack Obama was not responsible for Florida's decision to not hold a re-vote.

This is absolutely not true at all. We informed State officials there simply could not be a redo vote in Florida. It had nothing to do with either candidate it has everything to do with making sure that we serve our public well this fall. You don't do an election off the cuff unless you want a disaster.

Ion Sancho said a re-vote is logistically impossible.

Many of the urban counties still have not received their new optical scan voting equipment necessary to even actually begin even learning the systems let alone training the voters, and the State of Florida will be hard pressed to get all of the kinks worked out with the new technology before the August 26th regularly scheduled primary election.

When Michigan's legislature finally shot down Clinton's hopes for a new primary, election officials were relieved. They said they could not have accommodated absentee ballot deadlines, programed voting machines, and conducted regularly scheduled state elections May 6th and August 5th then set up for a new primary in June. Kelly Chesney is spokesperson for Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land:

They don't have enough equipment to do two concurrent elections where we have to actually for security purposes and recount purposes preserve all of the essential elements of an election. So I can understand the concerns that are being voiced by Michigan's local election officials. This would be extremely difficult for them to execute and they can't say that it would go off without any problems.

Democrats held a privately funded caucus in Michigan in 2004 but would need forty times the resources this time since two or even three million voters might turn out. Liz Kerr, Communications Director for the Michigan Democratic Party, said the schedule would be tight:

We would face severe logistical challenges. We usually spend the better part of a year preparing for a caucus, we would have to turn this around in just two or three months so that's problem number one.

Only Clinton supporters appear willing to fund a privately run caucus and Obama supporters have expressed concern about possible bias.

For Election Unspun I'm Dori Smith