By Liz Kudwa
A: This is a great question and one, I must be honest, I have wondered about myself. As the 2008 presidential election draws nearer, super-delegates have been in the news quite a bit. Let’s start by reviewing what a regular delegate is. Regular delegates are people who attend a political party national convention and who elect the party nominee. Some states select delegates during a Presidential primary and others during caucuses; some states also have a state convention where national convention delegates are selected. Some delegates represent state congressional districts; some are "at large" and represent the entire state. The Democratic Party also has a third type: super-delegates.
After doing some research, I discovered that a super-delegate is an “unpledged” delegate. Super-delegates are seated automatically, based solely on their status as current or former elected officeholders and party officials. Democratic governors and members of Congress, former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, former vice president Al Gore, retired congressional leaders such as Dick Gephardt, and all Democratic National Committee members are in this super-delegate category.
As super-delegates, they can vote for any candidate in the Democratic nominating process. They are not tied to a candidate based on voter preferences in any state. Super-delegates may also announce their support for any candidate prior to an election. But because they are "unpledged" delegates to the convention, they may shift their support to another candidate at any time.
So, why, you might ask, are these super-delegates necessary? It doesn’t sound like the Democratic process is very Democratic if the selections of these super-delegates are based solely on the preferences of higher ranking members of the Democratic National Committee and don’t represent any particular voters. The result of the 1972 presidential election is the reason why super-delegates came into existence. The 1972 Democratic National Convention produced George McGovern as the Democratic presidential nominee. Although he won the nomination by a wide margin, he lost the presidency in a landslide to Richard Nixon, winning only one state and 37.5 percent of the popular vote. Because of this, the Democratic Party instituted super-delegates as a safeguard to guarantee party control over the nomination process. Political experts say this system was put in place so the party could avoid a mistake by voters in nominating a candidate.
There are more than 4,000 delegates in the Democratic National Convention and approximately one-fifth of those 4,000 are super-delegates whose support is not pledged to a particular candidate. Candidates must obtain 2,025 votes to win the Democratic presidential nomination.
Republicans also have a similar process but they call their delegates “pledged” and “unpledged”. As with the Democratic super-delegates, the unpledged Republican delegates also are not required to indicate a preference for a candidate. They comprise approximately one-fifth of the 2,380 total delegates and according to CNN, the majority of unpledged Republican delegates are elected just like pledged delegates (therefore likely to be committed to a specific candidate.) Some unpledged Republican delegates automatically become delegates by virtue of their status as either a party chair or a national party committee person. This group is known as unpledged Republican National Committee member delegates.
Elizabeth Kudwa is the Business Reference Librarian at the Capital Area District Library located at 401 S. Capitol Avenue in Lansing, MI. Contact her at 517-589-9400 or by e-mail at kudwae@cadl.org.
