Justin Webb's America

Texas voting rules

• Justin Webb
• 12 Feb 08, 03:28 PM GMT

WASHINGTON DC: As we await news of the latest primaries, Democrats with strong stomachs might want to look ahead to March, and these thoughts from the Houston Chronicle on the Texas voting rules; rules that, according to the paper, might make things tricky for Mrs Clinton, because votes count for more in areas with a history of strong support for Democratic candidates:

"In the heavily urban, African-American districts of state Sens. Rodney Ellis of Houston and Royce West of Dallas, a good voter turnout in the past two elections means a combined total of 13 delegates are at stake in the two districts on Election Day.

Obama nationally has been winning eight out of 10 black voters, according to network exit polls.

But in the heavily Hispanic districts of state Sens. Juan Hinojosa of McAllen and Eddie Lucio Jr. of Brownsville, election turnout was low, and a combined total of seven delegates are at stake.

Clinton has been taking six of 10 Hispanic votes nationally.

So, a big South Texas win might not mean as much for Clinton as a big win for Obama in the two black districts."

Here is the full article from the Houston Chronicle.

UPDATE: For an inside look at the angst and joy of decision making among the suburban moms of Washington DC and Maryland - I bring you this news just in...

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Queasy super delegates?

• Justin Webb
• 12 Feb 08, 04:39 AM GMT

Colin wins the prize for making a sharp point with fewest words. Still wrong, Colin, but I salute your brevity.

To Nick Payne, I would suggest that the super delegates are beginning to feel a bit queasy - if, as seems increasingly likely, they are called upon to sit on party democracy. But that, of course, was the purpose of the super delegates so maybe they ought to have the courage of their convictions... It is odd, is it not, that these systems are put in place and then repudiated when they work as they are intended to work?

John, I think that answers one of your questions as well - and the point you make about Hillary being Royal is maybe one of her biggest underlying problems.

I like Peter Piperrino’s point that New York and California might suffer the political equivalent of a fashion disaster by discovering they picked the wrong side... Surely the nation should rally round to ensure THIS IS NOT ALLOWED TO HAPPEN!

I suspect the odd business in Washington state with Huckabee crying foul, it would seem with good reason, might come down to a misunderstanding on the part of the Washington state Republican Party Chairman Luke Esser.

He thought this was your father’s sleepy primary season: maybe they don’t get the papers up in the north-west. He did not realise, in other words, that this extraordinary season is about COUNTING (metaphorically and literally) and taking the counting seriously.

2008 is about re-birth on both sides of the aisle and woe-betide anyone who gets in front of the bandwagon. Huckabee will not win but his supporters need to be heard. This is not the year for voter suppression or vote suppression. Nor is it a year for prediction, as this piece makes horribly clear.

I do think polls get a bad press though: post-New Hampshire it was as if they had deliberately misled people. They did not: they were wrong and the dedicated folks who run them will come up with better models for the future.

Americans are often told - and Mitt Romney appears to believe - that Europe is post-religious. He will be cheered no doubt by the Archbishop of Canterbury's sticking up for religious law: a position fiercely lampooned by Christopher Hitchens. Seems to me this spat should give pause to those Huckafundamentalists who seriously think the Bible should supplant the US constitution. Secular government is surely a blessing.

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