Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

vote uncommitted

Rob picked me up from work last night, and on the way home we chatted a bit about the night’s primary results. In the Michigan Democratic primary, 40 percent of the vote went to “Uncommitted” — something that prompted Rob to joke that someone should create a “Vote Uncommitted” campaign button.

The gauntlet thrown, I had no choice but to take up the challenge. (I did not, however, pick up his follow-up challenge: Create a whole “Vote Uncommitted” identity on par with the branding of the Obama campaign. I’ll leave that to someone with far more time and creative brainpower than I can muster right now.)

It’s not awesome, and I’d probably want to revisit the color palette and fine-tune some of the kerning and line-spacing. But it seemed like a funny idea at midnight last night.

In the case of Michigan, the “uncommitted” vote was so high because John Edwards and Barack Obama were not on the Democratic ballot and, per state rules regarding closed ballots, write-in votes wouldn’t be counted. Michigan’s slate of delegates are apportioned proportionally, depending on the percentage of the vote won. At the national party convention, delegates apportioned to Hillary Clinton must vote for Clinton come nomination time. However, any “uncommitted” delegates are not pledged to any particular candidate and can vote for whomever they choose. (One presumes that, if this continues to be a tight race and should the Democratic party decide to recognize Michigan’s delegates after all, those “uncommitted” delegates would be wooed pretty heavily.)

I’ve seen “uncommitted” come up in other primaries as well, though in much smaller numbers than in Michigan (admittedly, a special case).

The “uncommitted” vote is an interesting creature. On one hand, it can be seen as a strategic protest vote against the other candidates on the ballot. (Indeed, in Michigan, “uncommitted” placed second.) On the other hand, it might be seen as an abdication of one’s own vote, effectively saying, “I don’t know who to vote for, so I’m going to let someone else decide.” At the national convention, there’s no guarantee that the “uncommitted” delegate would vote for a candidate that “uncommitted” voter would like — nor, indeed that the delegate wouldn’t vote for the very candidate that the protest voter was trying to vote against. (Then again, for those protest voters, perhaps the goal is to hamper a leading candidate’s momentum during primary season. By convention-time, the presumptive party nominee usually is already known and the votes of those “uncommitted” delegates may be a moot point.)