"How to un-break the primaries

The process is a mess. We asked 10 experts why — and what they’d do about it."

--Washington Post -- February 28, 2020

Superdelegate section by Selina Vickers was a delegate for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. She is a candidate for the West Virginia House of Delegates, in District 32.

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Superdelegates” had some of their power stripped from them after the contentious 2016 Democratic primary contest. Now it’s time to finish the job: They ought to be neutered entirely.

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Superdelegates debuted at the 1984 Democratic convention, after the party reworked its rules to respond to President Jimmy Carter’s calamitous defeat in 1980. The idea was that these special delegates — typically politicians and senior party officials — wouldn’t be bound by the decisions of state primary voters and caucusers: They could throw their weight behind whichever candidate they thought would perform best in the general election. This year, there are 771 superdelegate votes and 3,979 pledged delegates (who are committed to a candidate but have the right to change their votes). The problem is that there can be a chasm between the judgments of party insiders and the grass roots about which candidates are most electable.

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Superdelegates overwhelmingly went for Hillary Clinton in 2016, for example. Although she also defeated Bernie Sanders in the pledged-delegate count, the superdelegates were listed in news stories tracking the election along with pledged delegates; that produced the illusion that Clinton had amassed more delegates than she truly had (since superdelegates can and do change their votes at the convention based on primary outcomes). The false impression that a Clinton victory was inevitable may even have discouraged Sanders supporters from turning out in late-voting states.

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After that, the rules were changed, and superdelegates will not be permitted to vote on the first presidential nominating ballot this year. That’s an improvement, but consider that the convention itself could change that rule, reverting to letting superdelegates vote on the first ballot. Worse, superdelegates themselves could take part in such a vote. It would not surprise some of us if establishment Democrats tried to restore the old rule, or manipulated the interpretation of the rules, to block a Sanders nomination. Doing so would tear the party apart, perhaps irreparably.

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A certain number of elected party leaders could retain the title of “automatic” delegates, but they should not have a “free” or “wild card” vote at any stage. Instead, they should pledge to a candidate before their state’s primary or caucuses. If their candidates don’t earn votes at the state level, they wouldn’t have a say — so they couldn’t interfere in the democratic selection of a nominee.

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Even in their weakened form, superdelegates are super-problematic. There is nothing preventing a financial or pharmaceutical corporation from lobbying them to use their votes to nominate a particular candidate, for instance. Sometimes, Democratic National Committee members defend superdelegates by observing that they are responsive to public opinion: They will switch from an “establishment” to an “insurgent” candidate if the insurgent is winning (as they did with Barack Obama in 2008). But what’s the point of having delegates with such power if they are permitted to flip their votes to make sure they are on the winning side? Much better to just ditch them.

 

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