I'm not a lawyer; I'm a journalist. But in a conversation with a progressive Michigan attorney, my love of words and her love of the law intersected, and we both realized there's something that's been driving us crazy for a long time now -- and it's something progressives, regardless of which candidate they support in the primary, do on a daily (or hourly, in the case of Kossacks) basis: use the term "disenfranchisement" when discussing the Michigan and Florida primary votes.
Back in March, Bill Clinton said:
I must say that this new strategy of denying and disempowering and disenfranchising the voters in Florida and Michigan is, I believe, a terrible mistake. Hillary believes their votes should be counted. And I don't know how we're gonna go to those people in the general election and say you gotta vote for us even though we dumped all over you in the primary.
But Clinton, who should know better, is simply wrong. You can't be "disenfranchised" from a state primary vote, because there's no franchise to be dis'd from.
In other words, there is no constitutional right to vote in a state primary. States don't have to hold primaries in the first place, and they can limit participation in them to only certain people -- for instance, in Florida, independent voters cannot vote in the primary at all. That's because the primaries are state party procedures.
It's not that there isn't a legitimate public debate on what to do about the Michigan and Florida delegates. Of course there is. And it's not even that progressives shouldn't be upset that we're frustratingly in a position where we're damned if we do and damned if we don't, simply out of basic fairness and the desire to see our party's future isn't damaged.
But every time one of us uses the term "disenfranchisement" when discussing the voters in the Michigan and Florida state primaries, we're playing into a frame that we then have to overcome in the quest to make a fair and rational decision about their delegates. We're letting it be framed wrongly as a voting rights issue, with all the powerful historical and social and just plain human decency implications of that, instead of a party structural and procedural issue, which is what it is.
I don't personally believe that average voters and citizens should pay the price for the actions of party insiders, but that is not a voting rights issue. It's not about "disenfranchisement." If it were, everyone in a caucus state would be "disenfranchised." Everyone in a state with a closed primary would be "disenfranchised."
Certainly we often use the term "disenfranchise" in a general, non-legal way to mean "disempower," but by using it here, in what is strictly a legal, procedural, regulatory sense, we're making a huge mistake and giving power to a frame that's wrong and harmful not just to anyone's desired nominee, but to the party.
And I'm also not saying that informing people they don't have a right to vote in a primary is going to be a winning strategy in this debate. It won't be. I'm just saying... stop using this word. It's not accurate and it's sure as hell not helpful.
And didn't we learn something about the power of words four years ago?