Citizens Slogging the Superdelegates

Posted by Mark Myers, AlterNet at 3:17 PM on February 14, 2008.

Last Monday was not so ordinary.

I was in the process of helping to start up a blog. There were lots of emails going back and forth with my blogging partner. As the day went on the emails were less about the blog and more about the emerging issue of the superdelegates and the growing anxiety that the Democratic nomination might be determined by this class of delegates who aren't beholden to the will of the voters.

While discussing the supers, I floated this idea to my blogging partner at LiteraryOutpost.com: Why not create a wiki to centralize information about super delegates? I wanted to compile popular vote results and pledged delegates district by district, and track those results against the superdelegates' current pledges (and their eventual votes). This would serve as a resource to citizens and journalists with interest in the matter.

For all the hand-wringing about superdelegates, it would be difficult or even impossible to speak about their impact on the process without digging into the numbers. With some mainstream media outlets not even separating the supers out in the delegate counts, I figured this would require some immediate and collaborative citizen action.

And so, the Superdelegate Transparency Project was born. On Monday night I built the wiki. On Tuesday, the blog was launched. On Wednesday, Chris Bowers mentioned the project on OpenLeft.com. On Thursday I found myself giving a radio interview for the first time in my life and Jennifer had placed a piece on Huffington Post about the project. The superdelegate project was off to a flying start.

We are still moving right along. But what I have found both interesting and surprising are some of the negative reactions to both the project and to the suggestion that rank-and-file Democrats should have something to say about how the supers vote.

A little back-story about me: My father was in politics--serving as a Republican member of the US House of Representatives in the 1970s. While he and I often disagree about specific policies, he taught me that above everything else the political process should, ideally, be open and fair. I have long cradled these two attributes as the foundation for my own political thought.

Perhaps that makes me too naive for contemporary politics.

It must, because I have been stunned by suggestions that the mere act of compiling information somehow indicates a political bias. Is it currently impossible to be an advocate of better process and more transparency without advocating a particular candidate?

Let me provide some disclosure right here: I am not a registered democrat. Actually, I don't even vote that frequently. I believe our system is terribly flawed and I am turned off by what I consider to be a destructive political process. I see the wiki project as a chance to do something positive by making information available to citizens so that they know how they are represented (or not represented) within the Democratic party.

I can't speak for all the participants in the project, but I have no dog in the fight between Clinton and Obama.

So, it feels like I have unwittingly walked into is a small but growing re-enactment of the 2000 election controversy. Reading through comments this week on Huffington Post I noticed some people using almost the exact same language as James Baker did in 2000.when he said, ''The Gore campaign is working to try to change the counting rules and standards...so as to overcome Governor Bush's continuing lead." It might not be long before we see 2000-style rhetoric coming straight out of each candidate's campaign.

One charge caught my eye as particularly Baker-esque. In response to David Sirota's article "Local Pressure Builds On Superdelegtes" one reader wrote:

These rules have bee around a long time. They are not a state secret. They could have been changed at any time before the election.

I really getting tired of Americans not taking responsibility for the rules and the law.

In other words, it is not OK to change the rules right in the middle of a presidential contest just because it[sic] close.

The implication, of course, is just like Baker's implication back in November of 2000: Somebody wants to change the rules just because they lost or are losing.

I don't know what Mr. Sirota's motivations were for writing the piece. But I have seen nobody talk about changing the rules for this cycle.

In fact, there are no rules on how the supers vote. So the candidates are free to offer favors and deals while the voters are free to cry foul and to threaten retribution for supers who cross them. I'll admit that I haven't read the precise rules on how supers can and cannot be influenced. But I'm willing to wager that there isn't a rule in there that says the public has to just shut up and take it should the nomination come down to the supers.

We are heading for uncharted waters. There is no precedent that says rank-and-file Democrats can't raise hell if they feel they are being disenfranchised. As a matter of fact, I think we should be worried if the voters don't raise hell when they see an elite class of voters given extraordinary powers. You can say what you want about this being an internal matter for the Democrats. But the fact is that the primaries are funded by the public and the two party system is an inorganic structure that is more or less legally entrenched.

If we are going to slice off the publicly-funded Democratic nomination process as a private affair and beyond the scope of public interest, what kind of precedent does that set?

The fact that we are on this slow-moving train wreck should tell us something. The superdelegate system is flawed. At worst it represents a top-down apparatchik-style view of the democratic process. At best it is superfluous to the nomination process. Take your pick.

But the rub to all this is that on one level, the supers do democratize the convention--just not the nominating process. You see, there are some other matters that go on at the convention such as amending party rules and voting on the party platform. If the superdelegate positions didn't exist, the pledged delegates would largely be gobbled up by folks currently afforded 'super' status. Supers do have a vested interest in going to the convention and having their voices heard on matters which are very strictly limited to the party. Creating the supers freed up the pledged delegate spots for rank-and-files to make it to the convention and have their say, too.

The solution, if you ask this outsider, is simple. Keep the supers, but after 2008 don't allow them to vote on the first nominating ballot. If a candidate wins the majority of pledged delegates, he or she deserves the nomination. If the nomination process goes to a second round, let the supers step in and cast votes.

That may not be simple in terms of how it is codified in the convention rules. But it is simple and direct in terms of keeping the parts of the super-delegate system which makes the supers good while slicing off the unsavory bits.

Sadly, that will only address the problem going forward. We are still faced with the possibility of a nominee decided in the back room -- certainly not a situation which brings to mind an open and fair government.

And so the project continues. In fact, we are moving the wiki over to Congresspedia this week to help expedite the project. We have also teamed up DemConWatch, which currently has the most comprehensive listing of superdelegates and their commitments.

We are working to shine what light we can onto this process. The scope of the project goes no further. Our goal is simply to organize the data and make it available to interested citizens and journalists.

Tagged as: clinton, obama, delegates, super delegates

Mark Myers is a former technology analyst in the telecommunications industry. He is an editor at LiteraryOutpost.com. He and his blogging partner recently co-founded the Superdelegate Transparency Project.