Florida recently voted to move its primary date up to Jan. 29th which is earlier than the Democratic National Committee (DNC) allows. The DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee is looking over the issue and is expected to rule today that if Florida doesn’t change its date it will lose the count of its delegates in this years nominating process. The move would make visiting Florida virtually useless for the 2008 Democratic candidates.

Some Democrats like Sen. Hillary Clinton who is polling very well in the state say they will go “wherever elections are held” but the DNC may also impose penalties on candidates who violate this ruling and participate in non-binding primaries. Right now there are many other states looking to change their primary dates to an earlier time.

My take? This is a difficult issue because any candidates who ignore Florida risk offending voters for the general election but putting resources into a state whose vote isn’t part of the primary race will hurt their organization in other early primary states.

At the end of the day the DNC isn’t going to back down, Florida will have to or risk losing its voting status. I am of the mindset that a one-day national primary would be a better system but i’m probably in the minority there.