The final deal will see all of Michigan’s delegates seated at the convention, but each will only have half a vote.

It’s an acceptable solution given that Michigan Democrats willfully flaunted the rules of the Democratic National Committee by scheduling a January primary after having previously signed an agreement to go no earlier than Feb. 5. The problem with the compromise is in the apportionment of delegates.

Despite the fact that Florida also broke the rules and scheduled an early primary, Michigan suffered by far the worst punishment when many candidates, including Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., removed their name from the ballot.

The final result was a ballot that resembled a dictator’s sham choices. Unsurprisingly, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., the only truly viable candidate left on the ballot, came away with a win with 55.4 percent of the vote in an election that was widely seen as tainted. The second place winner was uncommitted, with 39.9 percent.

Somewhere along the line, “uncommitted” was reinterpreted as Obama, allowing him to pick up 59 delegates to Clinton’s 69.

On paper, it sounds like a fine solution given the realities of the Democratic race. But if you dig a little past the surface, it just gets more and more troubling.

Leading up to this weekend’s meeting of the DNC’s rules committee, Clinton has been beating the drum about how Michigan and Florida voters had been disenfranchised in an attempt to gain those states’ delegates — states that had overwhelmingly voted for her.

For those with a good memory, this had been an extremely ironic stance, seeing as that Clinton had at one point stated to New Hampshire Public Radio that she hadn’t bothered removing her name from Michigan’s ballot because “this election they’re having is not going to count for anything.”

However, whether or not it’s a genuine position, it does shade the entire brouhaha in a new light, leading one to question whether a plan that sees a candidate whose name wasn’t even on the ballot taking delegates really does respect the will of the voters.

At some point, the members of the rules committee took it upon themselves to decide what Michigan voters wanted without truly asking them.

Who’s to say that those who voted uncommitted weren’t voting for former North Carolina Democratic Sen. John Edwards?

It feels vaguely authoritarian for a body to suddenly tell people that no, they were voting for Obama. People’s votes got changed along the line.

Reality being what it is, it was obvious that any compromise would have seen Obama receiving something. The troubling matter is that so few people seem to be noting this interpretation of votes.

Hopefully, this whole mess will keep anything like this from happening again. The more it does, the more it threatens our system of elections.

James Harrison is a State News columnist. Reach him at harri310@msu.edu .