A U.S. Democratic Party committee has agreed to seat all Florida and Michigan delegates, but they will only get half a vote each, dealing another blow to Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign.
The decision came after lengthy and heated debate by the 30 members of the rules and bylaws committee.
One of those members, Clinton supporter Harold Ickes, said the senator had instructed him to reserve her right to appeal the matter to the Democrats' credentials committee. That might prolong the dispute until August.
"Was the process flawed? You bet your ass it was flawed," he said.
Both states had been banned from sending delegates to the party convention in August because they held their primaries in January, defying the national party.
The challenge of the committee was to "come together at the end of the day and be united," Howard Dean, the party's chairman, told the committee on Saturday.
But supporters for Sen. Barack Obama and Clinton were clearly at odds, even after the decision became clear. They repeatedly interrupted committee members in the Washington hotel conference room and told each other to "shut up."
Outside the hotel, five kilometres from the White House, about 500 people called for the counting of every vote.
"The right thing to do is to seat all the delegates. Anything less is not democratic," said Beverly Battell Weeks, 56, a Clinton delegate from Orlando, Fla.
Dividing the pie
At issue was how many delegates each state should get and how they should be distributed between Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama.
Both candidates had agreed not to campaign in either state. Obama's name wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan.
With the half-votes from Michigan and Florida now included, the candidates need 2,118 delegates to win the nomination.
That leaves Obama 66 delegates short, according to a tally by The Associated Press. His total has increased to 2,052, including superdelegates, while Clinton has 1,877.5.
Clinton won both the Michigan and Florida primaries (2.3 million votes were cast) and wanted all 368 delegates seated -- 211 from Florida and 157 from Michigan. At the time of the races, she said the results didn't matter.
Ickes had argued his candidate's case.
"It's important to send the right signals to them and the people living in those states that we Democrats value those states, value those voters and want them as full partners in a general election in assembling 270 electoral votes," he said.
In 2004, Florida accounted for 27 electoral college votes (in the U.S., each state is granted presidential votes based on its population; the candidate who wins the state wins the electoral college votes), while Michigan added another 17. The Republicans took Florida and the Democrats won Michigan that year.
Obama officials rejected the Clinton side's hardline stance of seating all delegates.
"We have both fought hard throughout the country, both of us, for delegates and the fact that we're willing to essentially cede her delegates we do not think is an insignificant gesture on our part," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said.
"But we're willing to do this in the interest of trying to bring this to a close so we can focus on the general election."
There are three primaries left -- Puerto Rico on Sunday, and South Dakota and Montana on Tuesday.
Obama planned to spend Tuesday night in St. Paul, Minn. holding a rally in the arena where the Republicans will hold their convention in August to symbolize he has moved on to the full presidential campaign, several Democrats told AP.
With files from The Associated Press
