The Michigan and Florida solution

Michigan and Florida are particularly important states in the general election, but their party leadership screwed the states by breaking DNC rules. So the states -- who could've been influential in the regular calendar -- held potemkin contests and are now nothing more than pawns in the Clintontonista's efforts to gain an unfair advantage.

So what to do?

1.) Recognize the results anyway. This is the preferred solution for the Michigan and Florida politicians who brought about this mess (allowing them to save face), and of the Clinton campaign, which could use the delegates. However, neither held a real contest, with Michigan omitting Obama (and others) from the ballot while Florida was off-limits to campaigning (no matter how hysterical the Clinton campaign is about a single nationally-run ad that happened to be run in Florida -- as well as Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, states that had already had their contests). In fact, it's not fair to many Democratic voters in those states, who skipped voting because they were told, in good faith, that their elections wouldn't count.

But to me, the strongest reason to oppose this is because I want to see the end of the Iowa and New Hampshire monopoly. Supporters of the "recognize them anyway" think that this will help break that monopoly. But how could it? If the party has shown it lacks the will to enforce its rules, and if states can do nilly willy what they want, then no "official" calendar will ever have any effect. Candidates, unsure of whether a state will actually be counted, will be forced to campaign in "unsanctioned" states to hedge their bets.

So picture this: the DNC comes up with a new calendar, and the new "first in the nation" state is declared to be, say, Delaware (or Nebraska, or New Mexico, or whatever, it doesn't matter). What's to stop Iowa and NH from scheduling their contests earlier than Delaware? Not the DNC, because the precedent has been set -- it won't enforce the rules. And aren't the swing states of NH and IA important in the general election? (Yes, they are.) If the DNC moved up Delaware, so would Iowa and NH.

In short, if we don't enforce the rules this year, we can't enforce them against Iowa and NH the next cycle. The breaking of the monopoly demands we stick to the rules.

2.) Hold new elections. The DNC floated the idea of offering money for Michigan and Florida to hold caucuses in a few months, but that has been rejected. The logistics would be tough, admittedly, and elections are expensive.

3.) Ignore Michigan and Florida. The rules are the rules. They should be ignored. Seating their delegates would be no big deal if we had a clear nominee, but given that the race has shaped up surprisingly competitive, they shouldn't get a say in the decision, right? Sure, except that these are important general elections states, and the optics of this are pretty bad.

So that leads to my solution:

4.) Split their delegates 50/50. Give Clinton half the delegates, Obama the other half. The states get representation at the convention, but we don't have to change the rules of the game mid-contest in a way that impacts the race unfairly.

Sure, the Clinton partisans wouldn't like it, but if the issue is enfranchising those state's Democrats, this is the fair way to do it.

Remember, those states didn't have real contests. Many Democrats stayed home because their vote wasn't supposed to count. Seating the delegations based on the delegates Clinton won isn't representative of the state's will. If we can't have a new contest to determine the real apportionment of the delegates, then let's simply seat them, but in a way that they don't impact the race.