Sunday, February 17, 2008

I hate superdelegates

The LA Times posted a great article on superdelegates--some of whom are elected officials, some of whom simply worked for the party,and all of whom obscure democracy.

How powerful are superdelegates? In California, 370 regular delegates were allotted based on the votes of more than 4.5 million people in the state's Feb. 5 primary. That means each of California's 66 superdelegates will cast a convention ballot equivalent to a regular delegate picked by more than 12,000 primary voters.

"This is a device to try to reduce the influence of one-person, one-vote," said Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the watchdog group Public Citizen. "It's anti-democratic. It's specifically designed for the purpose of having the insiders . . . have some sort of final decision over who the nominee is going to be, regardless of what the voters want."

I am going to be very angry if Obama wins the most delegates (because he had the most votes), and Hillary steals the narrow margin of victory with superdelegates.

If anti-representative systems of election are preferred, fine.  Then don't call our country a democracy. 


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