The Barack Obama campaign is questioning the latest plan from the Democrats to resolve the delegate dilemmas in Florida and Michigan:
“The state of Oregon has mail-in voting, and it took them more than a decade to perfect it… And now we’re going to turn this process over to parties within the states to run on with a matter of weeks to prepare.”
- David Axelrod

Democratic leaders in the two states are considering a mail-in election to allocate delegates to the Democratic National Convention between Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. The Democratic National Committee will not seat delegates chosen by primaries held in January, earlier than allowed under party rules.

David Axelrod, Obama’s senior strategist, told reporters Tuesday that the campaign is reserving final judgment until a plan is offered.

“But obviously there are concerns about a mail-in vote. I mean, there are concerns about eligibility, ballot security,” he said during a conference call. “The state of Oregon has mail-in voting, and it took them more than a decade to perfect it to the point where they felt that they could run a statewide campaign through mail-in votes. And now we’re going to turn this process over to parties within the states to run on with a matter of weeks to prepare.”

Clinton won both primaries but Obama’s name was not on the ballot in Michigan. The plan has the support of Clinton’s top supporter in Florida, Sen. Bill Nelson.

The easiest resolution would be for Obama to trounce Clinton in the rest of the states’ votes the way he did in the Wyoming caucuses on Saturday and will undoubtedly do in the Mississippi primary today. As soon as he has the nomination in the bag, Obama will replace Howard Dean as the head of the party, and then it will be up to him to come up with a solution that makes Democrats in Florida and Michigan happy.

Assuming he has enough delegates to win without Florida and Michigan, he can rescind the DNC’s previous sanctions and allow them to be seated.

With delegates split proportionally in most states, this scenario will be difficult to achieve. But decisive wins for Obama in the rest of the states are becoming increasingly more likely than less. In the only two top-10 population states remaining, Obama is gaining on Clinton in Pennsylvania, where voting is scheduled for April 22, but he is leading by double digits in North Carolina, which votes on May 6.