From Politico.com:

NAACP gets involved

Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP, has written a letter to Howard Dean to express “great concern at the prospect that million of voters in Michigan and Florida could ultimately have their votes completely discounted.”

If you want to read the letter in its entirety, go here

Rev. Al Sharpton is all over this. He said, last night on MSNBC, and this morning on Tom Joyner, that this letter from Bond was, ‘ PoliTRICKS’ of the highest order. That this was akin to being in the 3rd quarter of a game, and then deciding to change the rules of the game.

Roland Martin (CNN.com, WVON-AM) said this morning on his radio show that he had been in contact with several NAACP Board members, and the NAACP Board had NOT approved of this letter. Bond sent it without putting it before the Board.

Let’s make this clear – Julian Bond has sold out to the Clintons.

There is no way, that the contests in Michigan or Florida could remotely be considered fair, plausible, or should be counted in anyway.

IF you’d like to drop a line to the NAACP, here you go:
NAACP National Headquarters
4805 Mt. Hope Drive
Baltimore MD 21215

Toll Free: (877) NAACP-98
Local: (410) 580-5777

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For those of you who thought the original letter was a hoax:

UPDATE:

Found this at Roland Martin’s Blog

From: “Julian Bond”
Subj: FW:
Date: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:24 pm
Size: 5K
To: “‘Roland Martin'”

When these rules were set it was suspected at the time that they would be discriminatory for states with large African American populations. It seemed a harsh rule to disenfranchise millions of our voters just to appease the thousands of white voters in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Party rules never stated that candidateshad to take their names off of the ballot as was the case in Michigan. This was something that the Iowa and New Hampshire state parties imposed on the candidates in a bidding war to show their allegiance to the first-in the-nation”white” primaries.

Both Iowa and New Hampshire strongly OPPOSED the addition of South Carolina and Nevada as early primary states. They fought theBlack and Hispanic Caucus tooth and nail to stop this addition ofstates with Black and Brown populations having a greater say in the nomination process. They lost and in retaliation made the candidates sign a pledge to them – not the DNC – to not campaign there and not have their names on the ballot. Hillary Clinton, Dennis Kucinichand Chris Dodd refused to sign this pledge and left their names on the ballot. Clinton did not go into Florida until after the polls closed keeping her pledge.

The Obama campaign miscalculated on this issue and should have stood with Michigan and Florida given their strong African American populations. Had Obama won these states I am sure many people would be supporting this change in the rules.

Julian Bond

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If you’d like to contact Howard Dean at the DNC:

Mailing Address:
Democratic National Committee
430 S. Capitol St. SE
Washington, DC 20003

Main Phone Number:
202-863-8000

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