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Posted: May 31, 2008 11:54 AM
Protesters Stress Need to Count Fla., Mich. Primary Votes
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WASHINGTON | Chanting “Count our votes” and “50 states, not 48,” several hundred protesters — many from Florida and Michigan — demonstrated outside the Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting Saturday morning where the fate of their votes and the political future of Sen. Hillary Clinton was being decided.

One protester’s banner read “1.75 million votes R.I.P.” and another sign invoked the compromise counting slaves as three-fifths of a person.

Sen. Barack Obama’s supporters largely heeded his campaign’s call to avoid protesting outside the hotel.

As a Florida delegate who supports Clinton, Nancy Hoppe of Largo, Fla., said she doesn’t know whether she’ll be going to the Democratic convention. If she does, she doesn’t know whether she’d get a full vote.

“I’ll pack half a suitcase,” she joked.

Hoppe arrived at 1:40 a.m. after a 16-hour drive from Orlando with other members of the Florida Demands Representation group.

She said after some soul-searching, she came to the conclusion that she would have felt the same way about the two states’ votes counting if she were backing the front-runner.

“I think we’ve been punished long enough,” she said. “We’ve been standing in the corner like a kid who’s been punished for misbehaving.”

The number of protesters numbered in the hundreds, not the thousands that some had predicted.

“We hope they are listening to us,” said Sandra Autore of Yulee, Fla. “In Nassau County, 6,602 people voted on the Democratic ticket. We want every single vote to count. It’s not our fault the polls were open when they were.”

This year’s Democratic primary is bringing back bad memories of the disputed 2000 Florida general election recount, she said.

“It’s not about the candidate, it’s about the vote,” Autore said. “We’ve been stepped on once, but not any more.”
Not everyone at the rally was supporting Clinton on her political merits.

Standing apart from the mostly pro-Clinton crowd, Kristinn Taylor, of Washington, D.C., displayed a banner touting Rush Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos — his questionably effective campaign to drag out the Democrats’ nominating process by having his supporters vote for Clinton.

“The point of Operation Chaos was to keep the Democrats fighting amongst themselves and expose the flaws in both candidates — something John McCain is loathe to do,” he said. “We know more about Obama’s radical, racist associations that we would not have known about if he had won the nomination before all this,” citing the Jeremiah Wright controversy.

Taylor said he believes the conservative radio jock’s campaign helped Clinton in several states.

“Definitely in Texas and Ohio,” he said.

A man walked up and asked, “You’re not a dittohead, are you?”

“Certainly,” Taylor replied, sparking an expletive-laden response.

Walking past the protest, Elizabeth Roderick of Richmond, Va., said she did not think Clinton was entitled to all the delegates from both states.

“Obama was not on a fair playing field in either state,” said Roderick, an Obama supporter who was just visiting Washington. “He was not on the ballot in Florida and didn’t campaign there. He was not on the ballot in Michigan either.”

John Kneebone agreed, adding “They’re so close, she’s got to fight for every delegate and scrap to get every single possible person on her side.”