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All the chatter was that Florida was the first closed primary for the GOP -- meaning only voters who registered as Republicans 29 days before the election could vote and that this would be the first true test for McCain. Reports tonight indicated Romney won the GOP vote while McCain was pushed over the top by Independents:

Romney won it 33-31 according to CNN exits. Even in Florida, independents were McCain’s margin of victory. Kind of incredible.

So, color me confused. Well, Michelle Malkin digs deeper:

So was it closed or not? Pidot probes further:

Exit polls rely on the accuracy of the verbal reponses given by the pollees and of course, aren’t definitively dispositive of anything at all. But 17% of 1,500 respondents self-identifying as independents who voted Republican means something irregular, unless hundreds of voters chose to tell pollsters a similar lie… …I e-mailed that county’s supervisor of elections at around 2 pm on primary day to inquire about the reported irregularity, but have yet to receive a response. Given the possibility that as much as 20% of the 2 million GOP votes cast today came from independents and Democrats (enough to change the outcome), I think we do now need some answers…

Yes, Indeedy. Now, I don't see black helicopters, but do we have more games being played with our voting process? I'm one of those square types who gets ticked when the rules of the game are changed in the middle of the game. It breaks down the integrity of the process, and makes many distrust the system and not want to participate. So, I'll ask it again (since I do not have time now to do any sleuthing): Was Florida a Closed GOP Primary? UPDATE: Others incorrectly assume McCain has won a Closed Primary. UPDATE II: Why Bryan at Hot Air is "not quite ready to make nice." UPDATE III: Ed Morrissey has the answer on Closed Primaries:

In this case, exit polls show "party identification" statistics that put 20% of the voters outside of the Republican Party. That's their stated personal identification, not their actual party registration for last night's primaries. That's not a bug, it's a feature, and it's unavoidable -- unless major parties want to stop re-registering voters altogether. I'm actually a little surprised that only 3% of the vote came from re-registered Democrats, considering the uselessness of their own primary this year, which still attracted over 1.6 million voters to the 1.8 million who voted in the GOP contest. Three percent of that vote would have been 54,000 voters, and yet McCain won by almost 100,000. Republicans need to look elsewhere for answers. No one robbed us of a closed primary in Florida. Even among self-identified Republicans in this exit poll split equally between McCain and Romney, so it isn't as if Republicans didn't significantly support the winner of this contest.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 1:18 AM and is filed under 2008, Law, Public Square. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.