Monday, February 04, 2008

Too Many Superdelegates

I see concern being expressed in various places that the nominee could in some sense be decided by the superdelegates. I don't really have the problem with the existence of superdelegates, I just think that the Democrats have way too many of them.

The primary system is already a bit of a farce, a kind of fake vote. With the timing issues, the caucuses, the various methods of allocating delegates, etc... it's hardly a pure exercise in democracy. The inclusion of some superdelegates on top of that system isn't particularly problematic. But since they're almost 20% of the total delegate count, I think that if they were to tip the balance there'd be a pretty big backlash. Candidate supporters give a lot of time and money to their chosen candidate, and they'll rightly be a bit annoyed to discover how much power the superdelegates wield.

If they constituted 5% or so of the delegates this would be less of an issue.