What if "Uncommitted" qualifies for delegates in the Michigan Democratic primary?
A glance at how the process works to actually allocate and select those delegates
Michiganders head to the polls today to vote on their preferences for the presidential nominees in both major parties. Instead of this being a celebration of the Great Lakes state sliding into an early spot on the presidential primary calendar for 2024, voters in the state will be confronted with a pair of lopsided contests in which the incumbent president and his predecessor are heavy favorites to win their respective contests and take most if not all of the delegates at stake.1
And with the processes careening toward a likely Biden-Trump rematch in the fall general election, the voters that choose to turnout have mostly been left with less than optimal choices: the internally popular but nationally underwater frontrunners or someone who is not likely to win the contest and decreasingly likely to take either nomination. It also leaves the media and other analysts with the task of trying to divine the marginal impacts of runaway primary results on the general election to come.
Granted, Michigan is a battleground state where marginal impacts may make some difference in the fall.
Moreover, the primary in the Great Lakes state is also occurring against the backdrop of a war in the Middle East that has personally impacted and motivated the Arab-American and Muslim communities concentrated in Michigan, but also activated young voters there as well. Both are constituencies within the Democratic Party coalition and both have been organized by groups attempting to affect how the Biden administration positions itself and the United States in that conflict.
Their outlet?
For all intents and purposes, the vehicle these various groups are organizing for is the uncommitted line on the Michigan presidential primary ballot. It is the stand-in protest “candidate” in the race, a rallying point for those hoping to send a message and influence the president on the war.
In many ways, this effort is not unlike the “ceasefire” write-in campaign that popped up late in the campaigning ahead of the beauty contest Democratic primary in New Hampshire in January. But Michigan is different. Yes, unlike in the Granite state, the primary there actually counts. But Michigan is also more diverse and includes a constituency more directly affected by the conflict in the Middle East. And the uncommitted effort has also been going on a little longer not to mention captured more attention in advance of voting there.
But what are the expectations in Michigan? National outlets have already conceded that the president is going to win the primary. Yet, it does not appear as if uncommitted will get nothing in the Great Lakes state. But how much something are the forces behind the uncommitted push likely to claim?
Before trying to answer that question, it is worth noting that there is an effort to push Democrats to vote uncommitted in Michigan, but it is not exactly one effort and thus the expectations of different groups involved are, well, different. Our Revolution is aiming for 10 percent in the uncommitted column while the Listen Michigan has a goal of 10,000 votes. Meanwhile, among those allied with the president, “the more pessimistic among them [are] suggesting that “uncommitted” could draw well into the double digits.”
Those figures, regardless of which one, would put uncommitted in the range of qualifying for delegates under the Democratic delegate rules in Michigan. But would uncommitted actually qualify? And if so, how would that process even work?