War Room - Salon.com

Thursday, Apr 3, 2008 11:39 EDT

Hillary Clinton's petition

100,000 signers want delegates from Florida and Michigan seated at convention.

By Katharine Mieszkowski

Will a petition help Hillary Clinton find the delegates that she needs to compete with Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination? The candidate is apparently hoping so, according to the Boston Globe's Political Intelligence blog.

The Clinton campaign is circulating an e-mail petition to supporters that calls on the Democratic Party to seat the delegates from Florida and Michigan at the Democratic National Convention in August. Just to recap: Clinton won the primary contests in those states, but Florida and Michigan flouted party rules, so both candidates had pledged not to campaign there, and Obama's name was not even on the ballot in Michigan.

Nevertheless, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign said that over 100,000 people have signed the petition, which was sent out via e-mail late Wednesday night. "It is a bedrock American principle: we are all equal in the voting booth," the petition says. "No matter where you were born or how much money you were born into, no matter the color of your skin or where you worship, your vote deserves to count. But millions of people in Florida and Michigan who went to the polls aren't being heard. The delegates they elected won't be seated at the Democratic National Convention in Denver this August -- and that's just not fair to those voters."

Efforts to stage do-over primaries in Florida and Michigan have gone nowhere.