Photograph of a Manhattan polling place by Daniella Zalcman on Flickr
After the NY Times story revealed how NYC votes for Barack Obama appear to have been undercounted for the unofficial (yet official enough to be sent to the AP and other news outlets) results on primary night, State Senator Bill Perkins of Harlem spoke out. Perkins, who supports Obama, told the Post
: "Every election has problems, but in this case, all the problems seem to have been his," said state Sen. Bill Perkins (D-Harlem). "He got all the zeroes and undercounting.
"Some gross mistakes have been made. Very often, there are clerical errors. In this case, it was strictly with regards to Obama." Perkins told The Post the issue is more than the "one or two delegates" that could be added to Obama's tally, noting that if the results were accurately represented, there would not have been a "false momentum" for Hillary Rodham Clinton.
"It reflects the popularity and the weakness to her in her home state. It contributes to a false momentum," he said.
Perkins told the Daily News that superdelegates Yvette Clarke and Edolphus Towns, representatives from Brooklyn who support Clinton, are pressured to support Obama because Obama carried their districts. And ABC News' Jake Tapper is likening the NYC voting discrepancies to "the Florida recount, but in Harlem." The official results will be available on Feburary 26.
Yesterday's Meet the Press had Obama-supporting Senator Dick Durbin and friend of Clinton Senator Chuck Schumer discussing the the heated issue of whether to seat the delegates from the Michigan and Florida contests, which the Democratic National Party said would not count. Schumer suggested he supported the Clinton camp's desire for those delegates to be counted (since she won them) but added, "We are on the edge of victory here because Americans want change, and both Hillary and Barack represent change. To have these fights right now destroy the party, greatly weaken the party, makes no sense." Durbin was more decisive, saying, "to count them is fundamentally unfair and doesn't play by the rules that Senator Clinton and Senator Obama agreed to."
Well, the Clinton and Obama campaigns are certainly fighting for superdelegates, as the Clinton campaign wants the superdelegates to vote their conscience and the Obama campaign wants their votes to represents the will of the people they represent.
Tomorrow are primaries in Wisconsin and Hawaii, but the elections people are looking forward to are the primaries in Ohio and Texas on March 4.
