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LANSING, Mich. — A top Michigan Democrat has broken ranks with state party leaders, saying a plan to split the state’s national convention delegates 69-59 between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama is “fatally flawed.”

Democratic National Committee member Joel Ferguson — a Clinton supporter — sent a letter Thursday to the co-chairs of the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee seeking to seat all of Michigan’s delegates based on the results of the disputed Jan. 15 election.

Failing that, he says the pledged delegates should get a half-vote each and superdelegates should get a full vote, a plan Florida also is proposing.

Clinton, who won Michigan’s primary, wants to have the full delegation seated. Obama, who is close to having enough delegates to lockup the nomination, has opposed that, noting he took his name off the Michigan ballot after the DNC said it would strip the state of its delegates as punishment for moving up its primary date in violation of party rules.

The rules committee is to meet Saturday to hear plans for seating delegates from Michigan and Florida, which was also stripped of its delegates for holding a January primary.

His letter puts him at odds with the Michigan Democratic Party’s chairman and executive committee, which support the proposed 69-59 split.

State Democratic Chairman Mark Brewer didn’t immediately reply to a call seeking comment.

Under Ferguson’s plan, Clinton would get 73 pledged delegates for winning the Michigan presidential primary, while “uncommitted” would get 55. The Clinton campaign has maintained that Obama should not get any Michigan delegates even though many of his supporters voted for “uncommitted.”

“I am convinced that neither the RBC nor the DNC have the authority to take pledged delegates allocated to Hillary Clinton by virtue of the popular vote and assign them to either Uncommitted or to Barack Obama as the challenge seeks,” Ferguson wrote in his letter.

The plan to split the delegates 69-59 was drawn up by a four-member team of prominent Michigan Democrats.

“We spent a lot of time working with both campaigns trying to figure out a solution,” DNC member Debbie Dingell, who helped draw up the plan, said Thursday. “This is a consensus that was agreed to and the entire executive committee supported. At this point, we’re fighting for a principle that’s important.”

Hillary Clinton, shown here gazing at Mount Rushmore near Keystone, S.D., Wednesday, is pushing ahead with her call to fully seat the disputed Florida and Michigan delegations. (AP Photo)

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Hillary Clinton’s campaign plans to go forward with its push to have the disputed Michigan and Florida delegations seated in full, even after a memo from party lawyers said that the committee considering their plea cannot fully restore all the delegates.

The Rules and Bylaws Committee of the Democratic National Committee is set to take up several challenges Saturday to the party decision to strip Florida and Michigan of their delegates.

Clinton won both states and is pushing for the DNC to reverse its decision, even though neither she nor Barack Obama campaigned in those states and Obama wasn’t on the ballot in Michigan. The DNC meeting offers the trailing New York senator a critical one-time chance to pick up more delegates before the end of the primary season, June 3.

“Our expectation and our belief is that the DNC will vote on Saturday to seat Florida and Michigan at 100 percent,” Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said on a conference call Wednesday.

But the party’s legal experts wrote in a 38-page memo that DNC rules require the two states lose at least half of their convention delegates for holding elections too early.

The staff analysis says the rules committee has the authority to seat some delegates from the two states, but that seating half the delegates is “as far as it legally can” go.

The memo was sent late Tuesday to the 30 members of the party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, which meets in Washington, D.C. this weekend.

The DNC analysis does not make recommendations for how the panel should vote, but gives context from the party’s charter and bylaws for the committee to consider.

Clinton adviser Tina Flournoy said Wednesday that the memo was merely a “neutral” analysis that outlined the positions of all sides, and disputed that it was definitively saying the delegations couldn’t be seated in full.

“We take the analysis straightforward … and believe that the RBC members will look at both sides of the issue and make a fair decision on Saturday,” she said, adding that the campaign still hopes “that the delegations will be seated in full.”

The DNC analysis said two options are available to include half the delegations — either allow half the number of delegates from each state into the convention or allow the full delegations to attend, but give them each half a vote.

“The rule does not actually specify whether the reduction is to be accomplished on the basis of delegate positions or delegate votes,” the analysis said, giving committee members some justification for sending the entire delegations with half-votes as some leaders in the states want.

The analysis also underscores a prickly problem: If the Rules and Bylaws Committee decides to restore any of the states’ delegates, there is no simple way to divide them between Clinton and Obama.

That’s especially true in Michigan, where Obama had his name pulled from the ballot. He didn’t have the option of removing his name in Florida, but all the candidates signed a pledge not to campaign in either state.

Clinton won the majority of the vote in Florida and Michigan and has been arguing that the delegates should be fully restored according to the results of the January primaries. But even if they were, it would not be enough for her to overtake Obama’s delegate lead. He has 1,979 to her 1,780. Without the two states, the winning candidate would need 2,026 delegates to take the nomination.

As it becomes clearer that Obama likely will win the nomination, he has been working to win over voters in the two states with visits in recent days. He plans to return to Michigan on Monday.

The DNC staff analysis argues that the Rules and Bylaws Committee was fully within its rights to strip all 368 delegates from the two states when they scheduled primaries in January. Party rules said their nominating contests could be no earlier than Feb. 5. Michigan voted on Jan. 15, Florida on Jan. 29.

The analysis also said one option is to restore 100 percent of the delegates — by a recommendation of the Credentials Committee that meets later this summer. However, that would mean a final decision would not be made until the first day of the convention in Denver since Credentials Committee decisions have to be approved by the full convention as it convenes — risking a floor fight.

Clinton advisers would not speculate about the possibility of an appeals process that lasts through the summer.

“We fully expect …. that these issues will be resolved on Saturday,” adviser Harold Ickes said. “That’s a bridge to cross when we come to that particular stream.”

Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe acknowledged Wednesday that the weekend decision could alter the number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination. Currently, it takes 2,026 to secure the nomination, and Obama is 45 delegates away.

“Our magic number could increase kind of at the 11th hour here,” Plouffe said Wednesday, adding: “If it’s raised a little bit based on the Rules Committee, we’ll have to go get some more superdelegates. But at some point we’re the nominee.”

He said Obama’s willingness to seat some delegates is something “I don’t think should be sneezed at.”

Saturday’s meeting is expected to draw a large crowd, with both sides’ supporters encouraging a protest outside demanding varying formations of the states’ delegates be seated. Proponents of full re-seating have mailed committee members Florida oranges and pairs of shoes to get their attention.

Plouffe said Wednesday that campaign supporters should not protest because it’s “not a helpful dynamic to create chaos.”

“I don’t think a scene is helpful to party unity,” Plouffe said.

Obama supporter and former DNC Chairman David Wilhelm said Obama supporters are “not going to turn this thing into a circus.”

The warnings put the burden on Clinton supporters to tone down what’s expected to be heated rhetoric and street theater staged to sway the rules committee to seat all the delegates.

DNC officials are concerned about a potentially large turnout at the “Count Every Vote” rally outside the event and have asked the hotel staff to increase security to keep everyone safe. The DNC says the roughly 500 seats available to the public inside were taken within three or four minutes of becoming available online Tuesday.

Alice Huffman, a member of the Rules and Bylaws Committee from California who is supporting Clinton, said she has been barraged with e-mails in the past few weeks. She said the senders include Floridians who are upset that they are being disenfranchised, and she has started printing out the messages so she’ll have a record to explain her decision.

“This is a really, really significant issue to women. Obviously it’s a significant item to people of color too. So I’m just preparing myself as best I can,” said Huffman, president of the California NAACP.

FOX News’ Major Garrett and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Democratic leaders are hopeful that Party Chairman Howard Dean can help negotiate a peaceful and palatable resolution to the dispute over Florida's and Michigan's delegates this weekend. (AP Photo)

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Howard Dean’s drive toward party unity will be put to the test this weekend when the Democratic Party meets to hash out one of the most divisive wedges of the primary season.

A 30-member panel of the Democratic National Committee is set to consider the dispute over the discounted Michigan and Florida convention delegates Saturday.

The DNC chairman, who has staked his reputation on a political strategy that involves reaching out to every state to win elections, has said recently he’s committed to seating those delegations — which were stripped because the states held early primaries.

But it’s a sensitive matter, and the meeting’s outcome could make lasting impressions not just on the primary race, but on the Democratic ticket’s potency going into the fall election. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and party leaders in both states are all attempting to influence the process.

Handled incorrectly, Democratic leaders worry it could be the thread that teases the party loose come November. So they are hopeful Dean, along with the campaigns and panel members, are able to reach a compromise that bridges a party already hurting from a bitter and protracted primary campaign.

“What’s at stake is nothing less than the confidence of Florida voters going into the general election, and the presidency itself,” said Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

She faults Dean and DNC leadership for early on criticizing Florida and Michigan in TV interviews and fanning the “flames” of their decision, which she said was over the top.

Party rules automatically allowed for cutting the delegations in half, which is what the Republican Party did. The DNC stripped the entire delegations.

“They just went way overboard and cut off their nose to spite their face,” she said.

But she said Dean has recently moved to reconcile with the states and is hopeful the panel reaches a fair solution.

Battle of the Titans?

At first blush, the weekend meeting is a battle between two rival Democrats.

Clinton, who won both states even though neither candidate campaigned there, has been steadily beating the drum for both delegations to be seated in full. Obama, moving closer to clinching the nomination, has shown a willingness to at least seat some of the delegates, but he wasn’t even on the ballot in Michigan.

“Resolution, resolution,” Obama said Saturday when asked what he wants to come out of the DNC meeting. “I just want them to decide how to approach this in a way in which the Florida and Michigan delegates are seated and they’re happy … I want to be looking at ‘em when I’m standing on stage in Denver in August.”

Clinton spokesman Jay Carson said the campaign is still “fighting for every delegate to be seated.”

He said things are looking “pretty good” and that full seating of the delegations would help most with party unity.

“The campaigns are looking at this strictly in terms of how they might get assistance or how they might be hurt by a potential solution,” said former DNC Chairman Don Fowler. “I think that … Governor Dean should be very actively involved in talking to (both) sides to work out an arrangement.”

But Obama has moved close enough to clinching the nomination that even if he cedes ground on Florida and Michigan, he’s still relatively protected from the possibility of Clinton staging an 11th-hour revolt against his front-running campaign.

Obama is looking more to make a gesture to Florida and Michigan voters, which is what party leaders also are after. They want to put the dispute to rest, and unite against presumptive GOP nominee John McCain.

“I find it unbelievably unfortunate that here we are at the end of May … and we are talking about process instead of John McCain,” DNC Secretary Alice Germond, one of the 30 panel members, told FOXNews.com.

“Hopefully the process part will end on Sunday … We know what’s at stake.”

Clinton has already dredged up in recent days the bitter feelings Democrats harbor toward even the hint of disenfranchisement. In pursuing her delegate argument, Clinton has invited comparisons between the DNC decision and the 2000 election in Florida that cost Democrats the White House.

“You’ll have the disenfranchisement word being tossed around (this weekend),” Germond said.

It will probably be tossed around from both sides. Voters whose primary ballots basically had no impact on the Democratic race can cry foul, but if the DNC turns around to count those primaries in full, voters who stayed home during the Michigan and Florida primaries because they thought they were null and void can also complain.

Germond said the rules have to count for something, and that it’s important to be fair to the 48 states who “abided by the rules.”

“I hope to see this as the beginning of the unity that will be important as we go into the convention and into the general election,” she said. “We’ll probably have to come up with a resolution that probably won’t make anyone 100 percent happy, but will make everyone a little happy … that’s what a compromise is.”

Starting Points

There are two concrete plans for seating the states’ pledged delegates before the committee.

The Michigan Democratic Party has proposed giving 69 of its 128 delegates to Clinton and 59 to Obama, a net gain of 10 delegates for Clinton.

“Everybody believes that Michigan and Florida will be seated,” said plan co-author Michigan Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick. “The division of the delegates is the question.”

A proposal from Florida would halve its 185 delegates. From that, Clinton would get 52.5 and Obama 33.5, a 19-delegate boost for Clinton.

Wasserman Schultz said she wants the Florida delegation seated in full, but at least the latest Florida proposal is based on the primary election results - and not an arbitrary allocation.

The Rules and Bylaws Committee could consider other options on Saturday and will hear the cases of both campaigns.

But the committee could also forward the matter on to a separate committee. Clinton has shown a willingness to fight the Florida-Michigan decision as long as it takes to reach what she feels is an equitable solution.

Dean, however, has given every indication he does not want to see a primary battle last past June.

In an interview with FOX News May 4, he again called on uncommitted superdelegates to make their endorsement by the end of June “so we’ll know who our nominee is” by then.

“It’s tough on the party,” he said of the long process. “But there is also enormous merit to everybody in America getting a chance to vote for these candidates in the primaries.”

Saturday’s meeting will test just how focused and effective Dean can be when it comes to wrapping up the nomination process.

Kilpatrick said this weekend’s meeting has a direct impact on how long the primary lasts.

Neither side is approaching it lightly. The Huffington Post and the Daily Kos blogs posted recent articles about the swarms of protesters from both camps who may descend on the DNC meeting.

But either proposed state plan seems to bode well for Obama.

Even if all the two states’ 313 pledged delegates were allocated, with no votes for Obama from Michigan, Clinton would get 178 to Obama’s 67, closing the gap by 111 votes, according to The Associated Press.

As of Tuesday, Clinton was 198 delegates down from Obama, so that still wouldn’t close his lead.

Obama had 1,978 delegates Tuesday - 48 short of the 2,026 delegates currently needed to seize the nomination. Saturday’s meeting, though, could alter that threshold.

DNC member Debbie Dingell, who helped draft the Michigan delegate proposal, expressed surprise that what began as “a tiny bit of civil disobedience” - an early primary to move influence away from early-voting Iowa and New Hampshire - resulted in such party disarray.

“Nobody predicted it would be like this,” she said.

But she too was hopeful there would be resolution this weekend.

“Our hope is Michigan gets seated and we all start pulling together around a candidate,” she said. “We’ve got to pull together so we win in November.”

FOX News’ Aaron Bruns and Bonney Kapp and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are both fighting reports that their campaigns are in talks about Clinton possibly cutting her losses and joining up as Obama’s running mate.

Clinton called such reports “flatly untrue,” in an interview Friday with the Sioux Falls Argus Leader editorial board, adding that she is not planning any such discussions.

Asked if her campaign had any discussions with the Obama campaign about her possibly bowing out in exchange for the vice president slot, Clinton said: “It is flatly untrue and it is not anything I’m entertaining. It is nothing I have planned and it is nothing I am prepared to engage in. I am still vigorously campaigning.”

Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs also said such speculation is “completely untrue.”

“Both campaigns I think are rightly focused on the last three contests that are left in the race and after that we’ll know the nominee,” he told FOX News. “There haven’t been any discussions with the Clinton campaign on this topic.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a staunch Clinton supporter, said Friday she believes that if Obama becomes the nominee he should select Clinton as his running mate.

“I think as this race has emerged each one of them has garnered a different constituency and different states, and therefore when you put the two of them together it forms, I believe, the strongest ticket,” she told The Associated Press in a phone interview.

Former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson is overseeing the early vetting of possible vice presidential running mates for Obama, Democratic officials say. He did the same job for Democratic nominees John Kerry in 2004 and Walter Mondale in 1984.

But in her editorial board interview, Clinton tried to muffle calls for the Democratic race to end.

“Between my opponent and his camp and some in the media there has been this urgency to end this, and you know historically that makes no sense. So I find it a bit of a mystery,” she said.

Clinton continued to argue that she has a popular-vote advantage and that the dispute over the Michigan and Florida primaries still must be resolved.

Clinton won those contests, but the states were stripped of their delegates for holding early primaries.

FOX News’ Major Garrett and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Hillary Clinton, shown here speaking to supporters at a rally in Sunrise, Fla. Wednesday, is still looking to have Florida's disputed delegates reinstated. (AP Photo)

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Hillary Clinton’s campaign is taking a hard-line approach to the seating of the disputed Democratic convention delegates from Michigan and Florida, even as Barack Obama softens his stance on the matter and says he’s ready to compromise.

This sets up a potentially contentious and critical meeting May 31, when a rules panel of the Democratic National Committee is scheduled to determine whether to lift all or part of the party sanctions on those two states. If Clinton gets her way, the campaign insists the outcome will change the so-called “magic number” — the number of delegates needed to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination.

And a higher delegate threshold would put the nomination out of Obama’s immediate reach.

“There’s an unwritten assumption that 2,026 is the number to get the nomination. That could not at this point be further from the truth,” Clinton strategist Harold Ickes told reporters on a conference call Thursday. “Until they are fully resolved, there is no fixed number for the nomination.”

If Obama is willing to give an inch on the Florida-Michigan issue, then Clinton is after the whole nine yards.

The New York senator still wants both delegations seated in full, even though that seems unlikely. Clinton won both contests, but the states were stripped of their delegates as punishment for holding early primaries. Neither candidate campaigned in the states and Obama was not even on the ballot in Michigan. Many Democrats nevertheless voted for Obama by voting “uncommitted.”

Drawing the line, Ickes said Thursday that Obama should not have any delegates directly allocated from the Michigan primary.

“All delegates should be seated and all delegates should have a full vote each. With respect to Michigan, it is our view that the uncommitted delegates, of which there are 55, should be seated as uncommitted delegates,” he said.

Asked whether that was a change in position, Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson and Ickes said most uncommitted delegates likely would vote for Obama anyway.

“It is, however, presumptuous to assume that each and every one of those delegates is an Obama supporter,” Ickes said. “It may well be for Senator Obama, but it should not be for the campaigns or the Rules and Bylaws Committee to force delegates to be in a category or supporting a candidate, including uncommitted.”

That statement came after Obama told voters at a town hall meeting Wednesday in Florida that “my hope is in a couple weeks time, that we’ve won some more elections, we’ve won some more delegates, we’ve gotten the Florida delegation seated so that they’re gonna be at the convention. And then we’re gonna have a convention in August and I’m gonna accept that nomination.”

Ickes said “Obama seems to have crossed the Rubicon, and is in favor of some resolution of Michigan and Florida.”

With those states, a 2,210 delegates would be the new threshold for the nomination, Ickes noted.

If that’s the case, then Obama would no longer be within 61 delegates of locking down the nomination. The latest Associated Press delegates tallies show Obama at 1,965 and Clinton considerably behind at 1,780.

But Obama is looking for a compromise that is a gesture to Clinton and both states — not one that would alter the balance of the race.

Plans before the DNC committee could be generous to Obama. The Michigan Democratic Party has proposed giving 69 of its 128 delegates to Clinton and 59 to Obama, a net gain of 10 delegates for Clinton.

A proposal from Florida would halve its 185 delegates. From that, Clinton would get 52.5 and Obama 33.5, a 19-delegate boost for Clinton.

And even if all the two states’ 313 pledged delegates were allocated, with no votes for Obama from Michigan, Clinton would get 178 to Obama’s 67, closing the gap by 111 votes, according to The Associated Press.

That means Clinton’s best-case scenario still wouldn’t catch her up, since she’s trailing, as of Thursday, by 185 total delegates.

Wolfson acknowledged that even if the Clinton campaign gets everything it wants from the committee, her path to the nomination still relies on convincing uncommitted superdelegates that she’s the stronger general election candidate.

Clinton has recently invoked the 2000 presidential election dispute in Florida, which ended in George W. Bush taking the White House, in her effort to make the case to seat the two states’ delegations.

“We know it was wrong to penalize voters for the decisions of state officials back in the 2000 presidential election,” she said Wednesday in Florida. “It would be wrong to do so for decisions made in our nominating process.”

The May 31 meeting arguably carries more weight than any of the three remaining primary contests on the calendar. Puerto Rico, which votes June 1, offers 55 pledged delegates. Montana offers 16 and South Dakota offers 15 when they vote two days later.

Florida State Senate Democratic Leader Steve Geller sued his national party Thursday over the decision to strip Florida of its presidential delegates. The suit argues that the Democratic National Committee didn’t treat Florida fairly when it punished the state for holding a primary before Feb. 5. It also maintains that the Republican-led Legislature set the early date, and the state’s Democrats shouldn’t be blamed.

FOX News’ Major Garrett, Aaron Bruns and Bonney Kapp and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON — Michigan and Florida alone can’t save Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign.

Interviews with those considering how to handle the two states’ banished convention delegates found little interest in the former first lady’s best-case scenario. Her position, part of a formidable comeback challenge, is that all the delegates be seated in accordance with their disputed primaries.

Even if they were, it wouldn’t erase Barack Obama’s growing lead in delegates.

The Democratic Party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, a 30-member panel charged with interpreting and enforcing party rules, is to meet May 31 to consider how to handle Michigan and Florida’s 368 delegates.

Last year, the panel imposed the harshest punishment it could render against the two states after they scheduled primaries in January, even though they were instructed not to vote until Feb. 5 or later. Michigan and Florida lost all their delegates to the national convention, and all the Democratic candidates agreed not to campaign in the two states, stripping them of all the influence they were trying to build by voting early.

But now there is agreement on all sides that at least some of the delegates should be restored in a gesture of party unity and respect to voters in two general election battlegrounds.

Clinton has been arguing for full reinstatement, which would boost her standing. She won both states, even though they didn’t count toward the nomination and neither candidate campaigned in them. Obama even had his name pulled from Michigan’s ballot.

The Associated Press interviewed a third of the panel members and several other Democrats involved in the negotiations and found widespread agreement that the states must be punished for stepping out of line. If not, many members say, other states will do the same thing in four years.

“We certainly want to be fair to both candidates, and we want to be sure that we are fair to the 48 states who abided by the rules,” said Democratic National Committee Secretary Alice Germond, a panel member unaligned with either candidate. “We don’t want absolute chaos for 2012.

“We want to reach out to Michigan and Florida and seat some group of delegates in some manner, at least most of us do. These are two critical states for the general (election) and the voters of those states who were not the people who caused this awful conundrum to occur deserve our attention and deserve to be a part of our process and deserve to be at the convention,” she said.

Just as Democrats across the country have been divided over which candidate would make the better nominee, most of the panel members also bring personal preferences to the table.

Many are long-standing party officials with close ties to the Clintons. The former first lady has 13 members publicly supporting her, including campaign advisers Harold Ickes and Tina Flournoy who are working to build her delegate count. Eight are openly aligned with Obama. Nine others are officially undeclared.

“We have to have delegates, and they have to be delegations that reflect the opinions of those two states,” said former DNC Chairman Don Fowler, a committee member supporting Clinton. “How we get there is very different because everyone sees these questions of who it helps and who it hurts. I don’t think the formulation has been found that will get around the piece at this point.” But he said a solution is probably possible among the diverse interests.

Because Obama is in the lead for the nomination, his camp heads into the meeting in a position of strength. It is possible the Illinois senator could clinch the nomination by the time the panel meets if he picks up the pace of superdelegate endorsements in the coming weeks.

But Obama has such a lead that he may be able to afford to be generous and give Clinton most of the delegates. That would help put the issue behind them and help him build goodwill in Michigan and Florida heading into the November election.

Still, some of Obama’s supporters think the fairest solution is to disregard the primary votes and split the delegations evenly between the two candidates.

“It has to be a fair process for both candidates,” said member Yvonne Gates, an Obama supporter from Nevada who said she wasn’t sure what position she would support at the meeting. “My definition is a 50-50 split is something that is fair. It cannot be a situation where you give one candidate more votes than the other. In my opinion that wasn’t an election when they didn’t have a chance to get out and talk to the people of that community.”

It’s also possible that any vote that recognizes the Michigan and Florida results would legitimize their elections. Clinton has been arguing that she leads in the popular vote, but that’s only when both states are included and it is very slim — fewer than 5,000 votes out of 34 million cast.

Her accounting also doesn’t include some caucus states that favored Obama and where the popular vote wasn’t tallied. The measure of winning the nomination is not the popular vote but whoever can get the majority of delegates — currently 2,026 are needed for the nomination although adding Michigan and Florida back in would change the threshold.

Obama climbed to 1,904 on Friday, according to The Associated Press count. Clinton has 1,719 delegates and is trying to use the popular vote argument to win over more.

Clinton encouraged supporters in an e-mail Friday to sign a message to the DNC asking them to count Michigan and Florida in the May 31 meeting. “I need you to remind them that in the Democratic Party, we count every vote,” her e-mail said.

So far, Obama’s campaign has not been giving direction publicly or privately to panel members. The Clinton campaign’s official position has been full reinstatement, but her advisers acknowledge they are considering an idea before the panel to seat the delegates with half a vote each. Clinton campaign Chairman Terry McAuliffe said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that they “certainly might” accept a compromise to seat half the delegates.

If their elections had been held according to party rules, Michigan and Florida would have allocated a total of 313 pledged delegates based on the outcome of the vote. Using the results of the January elections with votes for Obama from Michigan, Clinton would get 178 to Obama’s 67, giving her a 111-vote advantage. As of Friday, she was behind 185 delegates, so that would not catch her up even under that unlikely scenario.

The plans before the committee will be more generous to Obama. The Michigan Democratic Party has proposed giving 69 of its 128 delegates to Clinton and 59 to Obama, an advantage of 10 delegates for Clinton.

A proposal from Florida would halve its 185 delegates. From that, Clinton would get 52.5 and Obama 33.5, a 19-delegate advantage for Clinton.

“I think it’s a reasonable solution to the problem that was created, and my hope is that we’ll be able to get past this and move on,” said Allan Katz, an Obama supporter who serves on the panel but won’t be able to vote on any Florida solution because he is from the state.

The committee is not bound to select the proposals offered and has authority to reinstate any number of delegates and divide them in any way.

An open question is how to handle the other type of delegates each state lost — the superdelegates who are party leaders not bound by the outcome of the vote and are free to support whatever candidate they personally choose. Michigan has 29 superdelegates, and Florida 26. A total of nine have declared for Obama, 15 for Clinton and the rest are undeclared.