Many of you probably read Bill Nelson's op-ed in today's USA Today regarding the decision of the DNC to "disenfranchise" Florida. He writes:

Four decades ago, our nation belatedly enacted a law to guarantee every U.S. citizen an equal right to vote.

It was said then there is no reason that can excuse the denial of this right.

It was true yesterday. It's true today. It will be true tomorrow.

Yet, the national Democratic Party last weekend decided the votes won't count in Florida's 2008 presidential primary.

It says Florida's earlier primary -- set by the Republican Legislature and governor -- would affect the sequence of contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

New Hampshire and Iowa likely will skip ahead. But instead of working to move South Carolina ahead about a week, party officials voted to strip Florida of delegates to the national convention. That means the country's fourth largest state will have no say in picking a Democratic presidential nominee.

The issue before us is simple: It's a case of fundamental rights vs. party rules.

Frankly, I find this unbelievable. To couch an argument for Florida's early date in the struggle for voting rights is laughable and insulting.

I received a few emails that went along these lines, so I suppose a response is warranted. Several points are valid here:

(1) Put the nominating process into historical context and you quickly lose any way to make normative arguments that draw upon the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Namely, primaries and caucuses were not major factors in the presidential nominating process until 1976. So, pray tell, how does the Voting Rights Act imply that Florida has some kind of fundamental right to the nomination of presidential candidates? I assume that Mr. Nelson will be filing suit on behalf of disenfranchised Floridians who were denied that right in 1968 and 1972. Or maybe, the use of the Voting Rights Act is simply a cheap rhetorical ploy to frame the argument on the best terms possible for the arguer, regardless of whether the framing is valid. Hmmm...I'm going to select Option B.

(2) Nelson's argument about having its votes "count" would be compelling if:

(a) Florida did not act first. But it did. It consciously and intentionally enacted a bill that it knew was in violation of the rules of both parties. It also knew that it may be punished for the action. It did it anyway. And let's be clear about Nelson's implied Republican railroading of the Democrats. The final vote in the Florida house was 118 to 0. It passed the Florida senate 37 to 2. And, of course, there is this little nugget of information, courtesy of the indispensable Green Papers: "On 10 June 2007, the Florida Democratic Central Committee voted unanimously to support the state's 29 January 2008 primary." The fact of the matter is that Florida politicians miscalculated. They thought the DNC would balk, and it didn't. Whoops. Now, they are trying to mobilize public opinion to make the DNC balk.

(b) This were really about having votes "count." In point of fact, it is not. It is about influencing the votes of others, and not having your votes influenced by others. That is, it is an issue of power - not equality and basic rights. Florida feels that standing at the head of the line gives it maximum effect on, maximum power over, everybody else. That's what the issue is. But, of course, saying, "Why can't Florida's votes influence the votes of other states?" is not full of those tried-and-true buzzwords that you need when you're a politician writing a guest column for USA Today. Arguing instead that it is about fairness is much more effective for this kind of venue.

(c) Its votes would not "count" if it followed the rules. But of course they would. If Florida were to hold its primary on February 5th, its vote would be quite influential. The problem is that it would only influence the 20 or so states that come after it. By moving its primary to the 29th, it gets to influence the voting decisions of about 45 states. In other words, the issue is not even about power versus powerlessness. It is, rather, about more power versus power.

(d) It were not the case that trade-offs must be made. But of course they must. Somebody has to go before everybody else. Why New Hampshire and Iowa? Well, here's a good reason. They've gone first for decades. Long before politicos really gave a damn about primaries, New Hampshire voters were lining up to cast essentially meaningless ballots for Estes Kefauver. If somebody has to go first, it seems to me that's as good a reason as any. The fact that Florida politicians chose to jump the line, and therefore disrupt the whole nominating process, seems to me to be good reason to place the state at the back of the line - which is basically what the DNC did.

(e) Nelson had been this worked about about matters back in May when final passage of the Florida bill occurred, trying to dissuade his state from adopting such a foolish and selfish law and warning them that the risks are too high. As my memory serves, he wasn't.

(f) Any of Nelson's ire was directed at the Florida legislature and Governor Crist - in an attempt to get them to amend the law. It isn't.

What Nelson is trying here is a rhetorical bait-and-switch. He wants to argue that it is a matter of fairness and of making votes count. But, in fact, it is exactly the opposite. It is about unfairness and making votes not count. It's about privilege and power. Nelson wants Florida votes to count at the expense of non-Florida votes, even though the rule makers decided in advance that this should not be the case and clearly publicized that consequences would be forthcoming for states that choose to break the rules.