Lawsuit over Florida delegates will be appealed to Supreme Court if needed.

madfloridian

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Sat Mar-01-08 03:59 PM
Original message

Lawsuit over Florida delegates will be appealed to Supreme Court if needed.

Edited on Sat Mar-01-08 04:08 PM by madfloridian

Just what we need. It will be heard in an Atlanta appellate court on March 17.

Apparently the suit will be continue to be appealed. It was what the Tampa activist who filed it said at the time...it was just the first bite of the apple...the first step.

From October:

First inning..first bite of the apple

In response, DiMaio said he and his lawyer are working on an appeal, which they plan to file with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

"I am obviously disappointed for the millions of Democratic voters here in Florida," DiMaio said. "But this is only the first inning and first bite of the apple."

The latest posts about the appeal make it clear that Victor DiMaio and his lawyer, Michael Steinberg, will continue the process to the Supreme Court if necessary. There is already a precedent in favor of the DNC.

This saddens me. It means the Florida Democrats are willing to take this all the way and let the courts decide not just the primary, but the election. Michael Steinberg is chairman of the Hillsborough County DEC.

DiMaio v DNC Lawsuit Granted New Hearing...says it may determine next president.

Tampa Attorney Michael Steinberg filed the lawsuit in August 2007 on behalf of Victor DiMaio against the Democratic National Committee (DNC) over its decision to strip Florida of all its 200 plus delegates to the Democratic National Nominating Convention that convenes this August 2008 in Denver, Colorado.

"We have been impatiently waiting for the Appeals Court to grant us this hearing considering the fact that time is running out if we have to appeal our case to the United States Supreme Court if the Florida Delegation is still shut out of the convention in August at the same time the Supreme Court takes its annual recess" according to Mr. DiMaio. "We are grateful to the Atlanta Justices for granting us the best option of of the three options available. The Court could have denied our appeal and dismissed our case or they could have asked us to mail in our pleadings. Instead they have granted us the opportunity to present oral arguments and the Court has cleared their docket for an entire afternoon, an option that was denied to us at the Tampa District Court. Considering the closeness of the Presidential Election at this point, every delegate vote could make a difference in deciding who the next President could be.

"Our lawsuit was filed long ago when there were many more candidates running for President" says Mr. DiMaio. "I believe it would be a travesty if the millions of Florida voters who went to the polls on January 29, more voters than Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina combined, and voted for their choice for President, would not have their votes count. This Saturday, March 1, Democrats all over Florida in 25 Congressional Districts will begin the process of running for and electing delegates to the Democratic National Convention based on the results of Florida's January 29 Presidential Preference Primary Election. Florida is the fourth largest state in the nation and we deserve to have our votes count and have a voice in deciding who the next President of the United States should be".

Attorney Michael Steinberg added, "We are asking the court to make a determination as to weather the DNC has the right to take action as they did. There are historical precedents and rulings by the US Supreme Court on both sides of the issue. We are pleading to the Court that the 14th Amendment to our Constitution, our "Equal Protection" amendment, prohibits "the state" from treating one citizen or group of citizens differently from another. We hope that the Court will rule favorably on our case to the benefit of the currently disenfranchised voters of Florida"

Doesn't that indicate they are trying to turn this into a racial issue? Bill Nelson tried that and lost.

I remember one of the buttons at the Florida Democratic convention. It says Size Matters. I say to Florida that when two states break the rules that were set up to stop leapfrogging so far ahead...that other states matter equally.

Then the Hillary campaign tried to use it when they said the DNC rules were not their rules. From the link above, words from her campaign.

The rules the party has put in place to choose its nominee are not the rules of the Clinton campaign and, just like the Obama campaign, we are doing what we can under those rules to secure the requisite number of delegates for the nomination. One way to avoid the situation described above is to figure out some way to honor the votes of Michigan and Florida, where there was record turnout. Counting the delegates in Florida and Michigan is a civil rights issue, and a solution needs to be figured out before the convention.

People tell me oh don't worry, this will be over on March 4. They say the delegate count will be definitive.

I say wait a minute. There is still this lawsuit that will be heard on March 17. And there are still the words of Victor DiMaio and his lawyer, Michael Steinberg...that it is just the first inning, just the first bite of the apple, and that they will carry it on to the Supreme Court by August. They can not even decide in these various lawsuits whether it is a racial issue or an issue of size. In reality it is an issue of rules broken deliberately and then blame shifted.

I say this is a shadow over the nomination.