The Nation: Gaza Is on The Ballot All Over America

By John Nichols

Inspired by Michigan’s unexpectedly high “uncommitted” vote, activists across the country are now mounting campaigns to send Biden a pro-cease-fire message.

…organizers of the Listen to Michigan movement that secured the unexpectedly high “uncommitted” vote announced, “Despite the naysayers in the establishment, the Biden administration is moving because of the pressure from uncommitted voters.”

The question now is whether more “uncommitted” votes cast in more primaries might infuse Biden and his team with the sense of moral urgency that has been lacking since the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel with a full-scale military assault on Gaza that has killed upwards of 30,000 Palestinian civilians—more than 12,000 of them children. The answer will come from states across the country, where activists have picked up the “uncommitted” banner and are running with it.

…More than two dozen states permit voters to cast “uncommitted,” [“uncommitted delegates”,]“undeclared” or “no preference” ballots.

…After months of marches, rallies, and protests, activists say there is now an electoral mechanism for raising the issue, and supporters of an immediate and permanent cease-fire are seizing it as a vehicle to “get a message to Biden” about his moral responsibility to stop the killing—and his political responsibility to listen to constituencies he’ll need to beat Donald Trump in November.

“Finally, we realized the most powerful tool we have in our grasp is the power to vote,” says Rami Al-Kabra, a Palestinian American city council member in the Seattle-area city of Bothell, who is working with Washington state’s “uncommitted” campaign ahead of its March 12 primary.

The Washington campaign gained traction last week, when the executive board of the state’s largest union, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 3000, called for an “uncommitted [delegates]” vote