Michigan Voters Told Their Vote is Worthless in One Party's Primary and Only Worth Half A Vote in the Other: Tell Me Again Why We Should Vote on 1/15?

The Michigan primary is coming up on January 15th, and the ballot is still a mess.

One party has completely disenfranchised Michigan's voters, while the other has stripped Michigan of half of its delegates to the party's national convention, effectively turning every vote into a half-vote.

The Democratic Party added insult to injury when most of the Democratic candidates decided to withdraw their names from the ballot and announced that they were boycotting Michigan's primary. Not one of them had the guts to come into the state and announce it in person.

As far as I'm concerned, the candidates that withdrew their names shouldn't be able to fundraise here for their primary campaigns either. They should be writing refund checks out to every Michigan voter who has contributed money to their campaigns from the time that they announced their candidacy to today.

They can go to the Federal Election Commission web site to figure out who to write the checks to. In the meantime, they can go play in traffic.

On the GOP side, the Republican National Convention stripped Michigan of half of it's delegates to their convention, along with all the other January primary states. Following that same formula, the GOP candidates should also return 1/2 of the money raised here. They can take my half-vote and stick it where the sun don't shine.

So, since our votes are worthless in the Democratic Party, and worth a half-vote in the GOP, why exactly should Michigan voters show up on January 15th?

I'm not voting on the 15th; and I'm voting 3rd party in the fall. And all because the two National Committees chose to defend the current system and punished states that dared to buck the system to protest the inherent unfairness of the current primary system. There should be one national primary day, with all states being treated equally, not four of the states being elevated at the expense of all others.

It would be poetic justice if there was a tie in the electoral college in November, and it all fell to Michigan to cast the deciding vote. That won't happen, of course, but then, who figured that it would all boil down to Florida in 2000, which both parties have chosen to disenfranchise as well as Michigan? They really ought to think about that.