GOP to decide Florida election rules after Florida votes

The Florida 2000 election will always be remembered as the one where the GOP and five hacks on the Supreme Court prevented the votes being counted. The 2012 Florida Primary may well end up as the one where the Republicans didn't decide how to count the vote until after the election.

Seeing the drawn out contest between Obama and Clinton in the primaries as giving the winner an advantage against McCain, the RNC designed their nomination contest rules to prevent any candidate getting an early win. According to the RNC rules, states that vote early must allocate delegates using a proportionate system. Only states voting after April 1st are allowed to use winner takes all rules.

The Florida GOP decided to ignore the rules and hold its primary early, causing the party cutting their allocation of delegates from 99 votes to 50. It is also being held as a winner takes all fight. But this is subject to challenge in the weeks immediately prior to the convention.

Two weeks ago Romney had the nomination in the bag and the question of which delegates would be seated was purely hypothetical. The difference between 50 votes and 'some' may now decide the race.

The RNC is left with an even worse choice than the one the Democrats might have faced if Clinton had come close enough to beat Obama. Threatening to disqualify the votes of the largest swing state was an idiotic threat, everyone knew that the delegates would have to be seated whether their numbers made a difference or not. The choice between following state law or the party rules is much more subjective.

The country is in trouble if the Republicans get to run the country with the abject incompetence that they run their elections. Oh wait a second, they already did that for eight years.