Up until mid-January 2008 in the current Presidential Primary cycle, both parties had races underway that were historic and looking too close to call. Republicans had a large field with at least 5 major candidates in serious contention. Democrats had a slightly smaller field with 3 major candidates, but trending toward a showdown between two. From political pundits in the media to political junkies in the public, there was growing talk of the potential for brokered conventions … as well as increased discussion about the role of “super delegates” to decide the winners.
Being casually aware of the term and concept, but somewhat troubled by its implication, I did some basic digging. I discovered that the term “super delegate” is generally understood to apply to Democrat delegates, although some also exist in the Republican primary system too. However, the role of the super delegate is vastly more influential in the Democrat party with about 20% of Democrat Convention delegate voting power coming from “super delegates (vs. a very small fraction for Republicans).
Said another way, about 80% of Democrat delegates are derived from the will of the people via state primaries and caucuses. The other ~20% of delegates are allocated to individual Democrat politicians – mostly active, some former, as well as other “supporters” (i.e.: there is a 21 year old super delegate who was interviewed this week on one of the all-news cable channels).
Although a much smaller percentage of Republican delegates come from super delegates, Republicans have more state rules that allow “winner-take-all” delegates – another form of disenfranchising voters (i.e.: In NJ, if primary results had candidate 1 receiving 32% of the vote vs. 30% for candidate 2 vs. 28% for candidate 3 … candidate 1 would get 100% of NJ’s delegates, BUT, with the same split in FL, candidate 1 would only get ~32% of the FL’s delegates (although in some states – like CA – the popular vote-to-delegate earnings could vary because the calculations are made by district vs. at the state level).
Then of course there is another issue of different rules, state-by-state, that allow – or don’t allow - Independents &/or ‘cross-over’ voting in state primaries. Could our system of representative government possibly be more convoluted?
But wait, let’s get back to the super delegate-thing. Hum, I wonder what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they came up with this concept of super delegates. A little digging again to educate myself. I’ll be darned, today’s super delegate concept isn’t a hand-me-down from George, Ben, Thomas and our other Founding Fathers. Today’s super delegate concept was introduced after 1980 to accord a greater role to active politicians!
Stop and think a minute here. Anybody remember reading Animal Farm by George Orwell? Remember the infamous guiding principle of that book: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” … a comment on the hypocrisy of governments that proclaim the absolute equality of their citizens but give power and privileges to a small elite. See any parallels here?
Innovation. The Founding Fathers weren’t perfect. It took time to extend “representative” government across race, gender and even beyond land owners. However, from the aftermath of the decision by the Democrats in 1980 to institute today’s super delegate concept (fyi – a super delegate can vote however they like, including defying up to the 100% will of the people from their area), to the winner-take-all rules prevalent with Republicans, some ‘innovative’ ideas can be virtually indefensible and even dangerous.
