Obama took his name off the ballot in Michigan, so he forfeited his right to argue for some of those votes.  But the (reduced) uncommitted delegates could vote for him if they so chose.

My way serves the purpose of the DNC to control the primary schedule but doesn't disenfranchise two key states.  It gives Obama a small hit in the delegate lead, but counts the votes.

I doubt anyone who voted for Clinton(/Kucinihc/Dodd/Gravel) did it instead of voting for someone else - so she deserves hers.  The same for the others on the ballot in MI.

By giving the candidates the power to block revotes without a default solution we've made NO progress.

Seat MI per the voting.

Allocate the remaining MI uncommitted, between Edwards, Obama, and nobody, by their respective weighting against each other in FL.

The popular vote totals are what they are, though.  No change there, because these are votes, and votes ought to be sacred.

Michigan is truly the Gordian knot.  There is no perfectly fair solution because there is no way to know how many of those uncommitted voters would have belonged to Obama.  If I had the power to decide, I would use the exit polls and assign both delegates and popular vote counts to those who removed their names based on them.  

How Would You Resolve FL and MI?

option 1: complete revotes, there's time.

option 2: accept the results as is. uncommitted is, well..........uncommitted. they can decide come convention time. when you play drama queen (in this case, drama king), you run the risk of it backfiring.

option 3: follow the "rules" and halve the delegates allowed for each at the convention. MI uncommitteds can decide who they support then.

So to put it bluntly, my solution is no solution. Florida and Michigan were informed of the consequences of moving the primary dates back, they did it anyway. And as far as I've been able to find after researching it, neither government made any serious effort to seek a remedy in the form of a revote before March; I have quotes from February from officials and in the case of Florida even from Hillary Clinton saying they were not interested in any form of revote.

So given all this, I think the process should go forward under the rules. If all but one candidate concedes, then of course that candidate will control the appropriate committee and arrange for the delegates to be seated. I believe that this is actually what everyone involved expected to happen when this began, including the two states involved, and I suspect this is what will actually happen; there are still plenty of states that are going to weigh in after all. But assuming a worst case scenario where that doesn't happen, it will go to the convention and the delegate committee will have to be formed and it will have to be hashed out according to the rules. I'm not happy about this, but I think that's the way it will have to be handled by this point, assuming the race remains extremely tight.

Now as people have pointed out, this keeps voters in those states from having a direct effect on the election through the delegates they appointed (of course it can still have an effect on the decisions of the super delegates, they can use this information how ever they like). But again, the states involved freely chose this path, and did not seek any solution until March. Now that, against all expectations, the race is going on so long that those delegates might conceivably have an effect on the outcome, they might like to change that decision. If it was still possible to do a revote, that would still be the best solution.

Now from here, there is a basic disagreement. I've read the arguments of people involved in the primaries, and from what I can gather, the fundamental reason revotes aren't happening is because the states involved simply waited to long in order to seek a solution. By March, there simply wasn't enough remaining time to craft a revote plan, putting it through a 30 day process of review, submitting it to the Department of Justice, studying it to see if it was racially discriminatory and met all legal requirements, especially if the plan involved a system of voting such as mail-in-ballots that had never been implemented in the given state before. This is why revotes are not happening, it is not because of Obama having simply pointed out some of these potential difficulties.

Now I'm aware that even in voicing this opinion that the lack of revotes is not Obama's fault, it is possible that I will be given a reprimand, told I am wrong, told I am banned from the current thread, and told any further posts I make on the matter will be deleted. This has happened to me before and I've seen it happen to others. But I cannot fully explain my position without making this point, so I'm doing it for that purpose, and I will not attempt to argue the point further.

So given this, I believe revotes are not practical The states involved waited too long before attempting this, and as one caucus goer put it, "Lack of planning on your part will not constitute an emergency on my part." And while I feel uncomfortable that people are being prevented from delegates they cast votes for from being seated before the nomineee is chosen, again, in a representative democracy, the elected officials are the representatives of the people, and the people are responsible for the decisions they make.

Now, having made that point, I will now suppose that Obama is solely and completely responsible for the revotes in the two states not happening. I'm granting this point not because I believe it, but because it is considered established here, to the degree that a poster may be banned from a thread simply for arguing against it. So even though i do not believe this myself, my arguments here will not be considered satisfactory unless I take into account the possibility it is true.

So assuming that, my answer of what's to be done doesn't change. Of course then we should try to influence Obama to see this is a mistake and to influence him to change his position. But assuming that's not successful, all the parties agreed to the procedures in advance, it still doesn't make sense to change them in the middle of the election, without an established procedure to do so. Of course people may be angry at Obama if he wins the nomination as a result. If I believed that Obama was the one responsible for the revotes not happening, I'd be angry with him too. In that case, People will have to decide for themselves if they can still support him after that. I'll just mention that the election is not over. It's also possible that Hillary will win a convention floor fight to seat the delegates from the unsanctioned primaries, including one in which her opponent was not even on the ballot. If that happens, I will be very angry; I will believe that she won the election through chicanery, and it will be difficult for me to vote for her. But I'll still do it, because she'd be an infinitely better president than McCain.

Florida otoh had both names on the ballot.  How would Clinton backers feel about a compromise whereby Michigan delegation is split 50/50, and Florida seated as is?  Popular vote cannot count in MI, and is not a fair reflection of Fl either but might be counted there as part of a compromise.

I'll go a step further and suggest many partisans on both sides would happily embrace their opponents arguments if the situation was reversed.

Beyond that I am not going to suggest a solution, cause I don't feel like being tarred and feathered by the side that will inevitably be offended.

Obama supporters would be disappointed with re-votes or seating as is, but I think less voters would be lost with either of these options and would be best to resolve a party image problem (looking like you are willing to discount voters is never a good thing.)  Maybe the party and Obama already have their spin ready, but it really should be more than patting people on the head and saying we will take care of it, trust us.  

Basically there's a way that reasonable people can figure what would have happened in MI and FL if it all never got screwed up from the start.

Personally I think the states have already been disenfranchised.

Revotes could right that wrong, but then even that's a politicized football.  It was funny how revotes become so much more unacceptable to the Obama campaign after Rev. Wright.  Whereas there was a week before Rev. Wright where the idea was being considered, Obama was deploying his ground game in FL and then it all fell apart.

You see, if you do care about the sanctity of the vote team Obama has one valid point.  If I take off my partisan glasses, I have to admit that if there were some Obama supporters in FL or MI who did not vote (or did something stupid and irresponsible -- as in MI -- and voted in the repug primary)  because they believed it would not count, I'm not willing to say "tough luck" to those voters.

If you say you care about voters, that has to be considered.  If I was told a vote wouldn't count, didn't vote, and then found out later it would count, I'd be angry about that.  That wouldn't be fair either.

So BTD is correct in that the only true solution that takes into account the voters  -- and takes nothing else into account -- is revotes.  That is the ENFRANCHISEMENT solution to Dean's mess.

That is one concern, enfranchising voters.

The other concern is the legitimacy of the process.

Who besides Obama supporters are going to recognize Obama as a LEGITIMATE winner of the primary if FL and MI are left out of the process or they are neutered by retro-active seating or 50/50 solutions?

Since Obama chose to remove his name from the Michigan ballot on his own volition, any apportionment of delegates he may receive from that state rests in the hands of its "uncommitted" delegates. Toying with unfair machinations to distort the clear intent of Michigan voters (i.e., splitting votes 50/50) is tantamount to vote stealing with the underhanded intent to award Obama votes he did not earn.

So to put it bluntly, my solution is no solution. Florida and Michigan were informed of the consequences of moving the primary dates back, they did it anyway. And as far as I've been able to find after researching it, neither government made any serious effort to seek a remedy in the form of a revote before March; I have quotes from February from officials and in the case of Florida even from Hillary Clinton saying they were not interested in any form of revote.

So given all this, I think the process should go forward under the rules. If all but one candidate concedes, then of course that candidate will control the appropriate committee and arrange for the delegates to be seated. I believe that this is actually what everyone involved expected to happen when this began, including the two states involved, and I suspect this is what will actually happen. But if it doesn't, then it will go to the convention and the delegate committee will have to be formed and it will have to be hashed out according to the rules. I'm not happy about this, but I think that's the way it will have to be handled by this point, assuming the race remains extremely tight.

Now as people have pointed out, this keeps voters in those states from having a direct effect on the election through the delegates they appointed (of course it can still have an effect on the decisions of the super delegates, they can use this information how ever they like). But again, the states involved chose this path, and did not seek any solution until March. Now that, against all expectations, the race is going on so long that those delegates might conceivably have an effect on the outcome, they might like to change that decision. And if it was still possible to do a revote, that would still be the best solution.

Now from here, there is a basic disagreement. I've read the arguments of people involved in the primaries, and from what I can gather, the fundamental reason revotes aren't happening is because the states involved simply waited to long in order to seek a solution. By March, there simply wasn't enough remaining time to craft a revote plan, putting it through a 30 day process of review, submitting it to the Department of Justice, studying it to see if it was racially discriminatory and met all legal requirements, especially if the plan involved a system of voting such as mail-in-ballots that had never been implemented in the given state before. This is why revotes are not happening, it is not because of Obama having simply pointed out some of these potential difficulties.

Now I'm aware that even in voicing this opinion that the lack of revotes is not Obama's fault, it is possible that I will be given a reprimand, told I am wrong, told I am banned from the current thread, and told any further posts I make on the matter will be deleted. This has happened to me before and I've seen it happen to others. But I cannot fully explain my position without making this point, so I'm doing it for that purpose, and I will not attempt to argue the point further.

So given this, I believe revotes are not practical The states involved waited too long before attempting this, and as one caucus goer put it, "Lack of planning on your part will not constitute an emergency on my part." And while I feel uncomfortable that people are being prevented from having the delegates they cast votes for being seated before the nomineee is chosen, again, in a representative democracy, the elected officials are the representatives of the people, and the people are responsible for the decisions they make. That is the bottom line.

Now, having made that point, I will now suppose that the problem isn't the delay of the states in seeking a solution, but that Obama is solely and completely responsible for the revotes in the two states not happening. I'm granting this point not because I believe it, but because it is considered established here, to the degree that a poster may be banned from a thread simply for arguing against it. So even though i do not believe this myself, my arguments here will not be considered satisfactory unless I at least take into account the possibility it is true.

So assuming that, my answer of what's to be done doesn't change. Of course people are free to try to influence Obama to see this is a mistake and to influence him to change his position. But assuming that's not successful, all the parties agreed to the procedures in advance, it still doesn't make sense to change them in the middle of the election, without an established procedure to do so. Of course people may be angry at Obama if he wins the nomination as a result. If I believed that Obama was the one responsible for the revotes not happening, I'd be angry with him too. In that case, People will have to decide for themselves if they can still support him after that. I'll just mention that the election is not over. It's also possible that Hillary will win a convention floor fight to seat the delegates from the unsanctioned primaries, including one in which her opponent was not even on the ballot. If that happens, I will be very angry; I will believe that she won the election through chicanery, and it will be difficult for me to vote for her. But I'll still do it, because she'd be an infinitely better president than McCain. But again, everyone will have to make their own decision.