Cross-posted on a political blog.

The vote totals and % of the major states not including NY and Illinois:

State Primary Votes State Pop Percentage
CA 5,066,993 36,553,215 13.9%
OH 2,233,156 11,466,917 19.5%
PA 2,307,759 12,432,792 18.6%
TX 2,874,986 23,904,380 12.0%
FL 1,749,920 18,251,243 9.6%
MI 594,398 10,071,822 5.9%

Basically, too many are supporting the status quo of the primaries and caucus schedule as is, for the selfish reason of wanting the outcome to benefit Obama. Too many others are wanting to seat Florida and Michigan with no thought given to the low turnout for the selfish reason of wanting the outcome to benefit Clinton.

Florida and Michigan are being penalized too much for a lack of leadership and foresight by the DNC and Clinton/Edwards/Obama in fixing a minor problem early before it could cause more serious damage. Posters (Obama supporters, I assume) have no empathy for the plight of Florida. My understanding (living in VA) is that the Republicans had a enough votes in the Fla. legislature to ram the move through voters and Dems be damned. So, the Dem Fla. state legislators had the choice of supporting the move or voting against letting the Florida voters have their voice heard with no alternatives provided by the DNC for political cover.

As a Clinton supporter, but more interested in fairness than in advantage, here is my proposal.

Seat the Florida delegation at 80% of their original allocation (% of vote compared to Texas), with 50% going to Clinton, 33% to Obama, and 17% undecided. I think Florida should get a higher %, because all the candidates names were on the ballot, and their fate was much more beyond their control than Michigan.

Seat Michigan at 50% (% of their vote compared to Texas) of their original allocation and give Clinton 46%, Obama 35% and undecided 19% (% of support according to exit polls).

Some Obama supporters state Obama would have done better than these numbers if he had campaigned. I would agree if the election had been before then end of April. If it had been after he would have done worse. These are the numbers we have. The undecideds then should be taken out of the equation to clinch the nomination which would add 63.5 delegates from Michigan and 140 delegates from Florida. So, the number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination would be approximately 2128.

As to what to do in the future, I think we should have caucuses in all 50 states starting on September 17th (Constitution Day) of the year preceding a Presidential election. All 50 states would have their closed (open only to registered democrats)caucuses from that date until the end of February. Then once a month from March-June we would have open primaries in the four regions of the country, Midwest, Northeast, Southeast, and West. The schedule would be on a rotating basis for both the caucuses and the regional primaries.

During the caucuses, candidates would have to raise their own money and the top five (or anyone receiving at least 10%)would be allowed to continue onto the primary schedule. During the primary schedule all the candidates would have their campaign money provided by the DNC which would be equally allocated to all remaing eligible candidates, no private war chests at this point.

Debates would be moderated by Dem. friendly journalists like Bill Moyers. Networks like MSNBC, CNN, and ABC could televise, but they wouldn't be allowed to get their corporate hacks to tilt the coverage. Once it got down to two choices, I would prefer the candidates debate directly with questions and answers and moderator just monitoring time issues.

I want to see more variety and choice. I want to see candidates be forced to work with a budget and compete on a more level playing field. If the media did a better job on reporting on all the candidates in a substantial way and not on crap like Edwards' hair, Obama's Flag Pin, and Clinton's breasts, then the campaign could be shortened, but they don't.