Super Bad

I have a few issues with the Democrats. Or more accurately, I have a few issues with the… I have a few issues with the Democrats. Or more accurately, I have a few issues with the Democratic National Committee and its rules for the nomination of candidates. And with the race still in the early stages and no clear leader in sight, the primary process is set to be a hugely important factor in choosing the next potential president.

Only, it seems like the DNC doesn’t have any interest in finding a clearly favored candidate. Instead, they’re pedantically guarding the rules and sticking to outdated concepts at the expense of actual democratic choice, which is kind of funny considering that democracy is the concept the party is named after.

Take, for example, the Michigan Democratic Primary. In an effort to give their state a larger impact on the primary process as a whole, Michigan voted to move its state’s primary to before the traditional Feb. 5 cutoff, in violation of the rules of the DNC. In response, the DNC stripped Michigan of all its delegates and three major candidates subsequently removed themselves from the race.

Or, looking at it another way, the DNC punished Michigan for trying to make the primary process more democratic and accessible by protesting the rule that only Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina could hold primaries before Feb. 5. But since those states are obviously excellent representations of the political tendencies of the rest of the country, the DNC was of course totally correct in removing 185 delegates from a race that is closer than any in recent history.

And the same thing is true in Florida. The state legislature voted to move Florida’s primary up to Jan. 29, and in response, the DNC has told Florida that none of its delegates will count in the national convention. Florida officials spoke to the Associated Press, saying that they would consider legal action against the DNC and a protest at the convention if their delegates aren’t counted, but that doesn’t change the fact that one of the largest swing states in the country might not get a say in who will become the democratic nominee.

Is it just me, or does this seem like a particularly terrible way to run an electoral system? If the DNC wanted to provide Democrats across the country with a candidate chosen by the party itself, they would allow anyone to vote whenever they wanted or, even better, just abolish the system of delegates entirely and use the popular vote. But no, that would be silly. We can’t even vote in the real presidential election ourselves; we need the Electoral College to do it for us.

And apparently the DNC agrees, which explains the existence of super-delegates, as well. In case you don’t know, super-delegates are just like regular delegates, except that they can vote for whoever they want to, whether that candidate won the popular election in a particular precinct or not. It’s kind of like when George W. Bush was elected President with a minority of the popular vote, but a majority of the Electoral College – and we all know how well that turned out.

Normally super-delegates aren’t that big of a deal because their votes are usually cancelled out by the larger proportion of pledged delegates awarded through the primaries and caucuses. But this election features two differences: an increase in the size of the super-delegate pool to 796 out of a total 4,049, or about 24.5 percent of the total available delegates, and a really, really close Democratic race.

If no clear winner emerges within the next few weeks, super-delegates could have the final say in who is nominated to run for president, no matter what the actual voters have to say about it.

Of course, the real drama of the race is going to occur in a few weeks, on Feb. 5. This year’s “Super Duper Tuesday” is the largest ever, with 24 states and more than 1,600 delegates being awarded to candidates within 24 hours. Compared to those kinds of numbers, the 796 super-delegates and paltry 313 shared between Michigan and Florida don’t seem to count for much, but between them that’s more than 1000 delegates, or slightly more than half of what a candidate would need to secure a nomination. In other words, the DNC has pretty much saved itself the right to nominate whomever it chooses, regardless of whether or not that candidate was actually favored in the primaries.

We, as voting Americans, should start demanding changes of both the Democratic and Republican parties so that we are allowed to nominate our own candidate, not whichever one the party bosses deem suitable. It’s our country, after all.

Shouldn’t we have some say in who we get to vote for to lead it?

E-mail Richard at rab53@pitt.edu.