Lots of solutions can be advanced and called ‘fair’, but ieach will also have its detractors. I haven’t done the math to determine the outcome of my ‘fair’ solution, as Lanny Davis has here. I just know what my first definition of fair is: compatible with the rules.

The DNC rules originally indicated an appropriate penalty for violating the schedule would be to cut the state’s delegations in half. So 50% - not the 100% they decided on - should be the most severe penalty under the rules.

No penalty at all does not constitute fair. There’s a perfectly reasonable rationale to penalize states that violate the rules. If no penalty is invoked, it invites complete rejection of the DNC as the controlling authority.. It would also be insulting to the 48 states that followed the rules. So someplace between 0% and 50% is some ‘least’ penalty that maintains the DNC’s authority and respects all the states that followed the rules. If that ‘least’ penalty is too small, though, it’ll invite all 50 states to break the rules with impunity.

But there is another applicable rule. States that moved their primaries to late in the primary season could be awarded as many as 30% more delegates, as an incentive to do so. So reversing that incentive to find a corresponding disincentive would suggest 30% is the ‘least’ penalty that should be imposed.

So a 30% to 50% penalty seems fair to me. Further, at this point, I’d argue that a 30% reduction in delegates would also be the best imposition.

But how do we determine who gets what from their? There simply is no fair way to apportion delegates from there. Fair would be to stick to what the candidates agreed to, a position that Clinton only abandoned after the Florida primary vote was completed.

It would be overly fair to Clinton and detrimental to Obama, to divide that 70% proportional to the vote that occurred. In the spirit of promoting unity, fine, let’s do it anyway.

MI is way more problematic. The ‘uncommitted’ voters could be distributed a myriad of ways. However, if the vote had been taken after Super Tuesday, as it should have been per the rules, the only candidates left on the ballot would have been Clinton, Obama, Gravel and Kucinich. So any solution should erase Edwards, Dodd, Richardson and Biden from all consideration . Even then, we can’t find any means to determine how that vote would have turned out. So how do we find fair?

Let’s revisit the premise of who we’re being fair to. Our principal concern is not fairness to the candidates, but fairness to the Michigan voters. After all, the major rationale to revisit the issue at all is to avoid their disenfranchisement. And since there exists no fair way at all to determine how they would have voted in January if Obama’s name was on the ballot, the only option left is to gauge their sentiment would be to assess how they’d vote today.

The closest measures we have for that is a Rasmussen poll released on May 7th. It showed McCain and Clinton tied at 44%. It showed McCain defeating Obama by 45%-44%. This suggests a negligible advantage to Clinton. An April poll by EPIC was more favorable to Obama as was a March Rasmussen poll. This suggests a 50%-50% split would be a very fair guess of existing Michigan voter sentiment. But let’s lean the same way we did in Florida, granting the second place candidate (in total delegates) a minor advantage here. Thus, after the 30% reduction in total delegates and after Gravel and Kucinich votes are subtracted, divide the rest to favor Clinton 51% to 49%.

By my definition, that’s fair to those who followed the rules, fair to the FL and MI voters to end their disenfranchisement, and more fair to Clinton than to Obama. I’ll leave it to others to calculate how the actual delegate numbers would result from this formula.

Absolute fair is impossible but this formula certainly deserves consideration as much as any other. In reality, were both primaries to be conducted again, I think Obama would win MI and come closer in FL, so this should draw no complaint from Clinton. Maybe it will if she doesn’t close the overall delegate count as much as she wants. But for the MI and FL voters especially and for the Rules committee, I think it may be the fairest that can be found.