The January votes in Florida and Michigan were irreparably tainted. Major candidates pledged not to campaign in either state, and Barack Obama wasn’t even on the ballot in Michigan.USA Today has an artice about the Florida-Michigan Democrat debacle. Leave it to them to now say, “We are more organized than the Republicans and are best able to lead! What…a joke at this time?

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Clinton, on the verge of elimination from the Democratic race, is desperate to parlay her “victories” in Florida and Michigan into delegates, or at least into votes that she could use to argue that she won more popular votes nationally than Obama.

Neither election, however, was a fair representation of the voters’ will. Rather than stake claims based on tainted votes, Clinton would do better to convince party superdelegates that she’d have a better chance than Obama of defeating Republican John McCain in November. That might or might not be true, but at least it would be an honest argument.

How the Democrats resolve this mess will be important not just for 2008, but also for efforts in 2012 to prevent the sort of chaotic leapfrogging that can undermine the primary process in both parties. (Republicans, who stripped rogue states of half their delegates, saw their potential problem disappear when McCain wrapped up the GOP nomination in early March.)

As a practical matter, Democrats want to give convention seats to delegations from Michigan and Florida, two big states that will be important in electing the new president this fall. All sorts of compromises are being floated, and it’s up to the party to decide what to do. But any resolution should remind states of what every first-grader ought to know: You break the rules, you get punished.