Not So Super

If primary campaign strategy is any indication, the U.S. presidential election is far less democratic that it pretends to be. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama began their bids with months of fundraising and media spin, and it seems now that they will end it by soliciting votes from party elites instead of the American people.

In a contest with just over 4,000 total delegates, these unpledged Democratic “superdelegates” control almost 800 votes—a 20 percent stake that could become the margin of victory in the nomination. The Republicans, gradually coalescing around John McCain, have been spared the superdelegate dogfight in 2008, but their policy is far from commendable: 19 percent of the delegates to the Republican National Convention are unpledged; of those, a significant portion is unelected. In this election and every election, the chance that a handful of political elites has the power to overturn the will of the people is an unforgivable affront to democracy.

One citizen, one vote: A principle basic enough for elementary students to grasp manages to elude our major political parties. Privileged as they are by electoral laws that make third-party success all but impossible, the Democrats and Republicans cannot hide behind tired excuses of their moral or legal independence as “private organizations.” Their fundamental tie to the government—which, for example, allows primary election ballots to run alongside other state election issues—obligates these political parties to higher standards of democratic fairness than mere private institutions. They may not be government entities in name, but they are as influential. No viable presidential candidate has emerged from a third party since Theodore Roosevelt’s bid for reelection, and the last third-party candidate to win an election was Abraham Lincoln in 1860. For the foreseeable future, every presidential election will be a contest between a Democrat and a Republican; for the United States to be fairly considered a democracy, the selection of the parties’ nominees must obey democratic principles as well.

We recognize, however, that altering this year’s nomination rules to strip superdelegates of their power would be impractical, unjust, and dishonest toward the candidates who have invested months and years developing strategies to fit them. Moreover, it would further undermine the Democratic National Committee’s authority in an election cycle that has already strained its relationship with state parties over front-loading in the primary schedule.

Nonetheless, while superdelegates are currently under no legal requirement to endorse the choice of their constituents, the accompanying moral obligation is not so easily avoided. The old rationalization that “party leaders know best” is both paternalistic and wrong: The presidential nominee of each party should be the choice of all its members, not of the political elites with vested interests in a particular party structure.

Currently, Clinton holds a lead of 231 Democratic superdelegates to Obama’s 145, a vestige of the days before primary campaigning began in earnest, when she was the presumptive choice of the party establishment and the seemingly unbeatable frontrunner. Months later, Obama has won more contests and built more momentum than his rival; and if he continues to do so superdelegates should vote to best reflect the sentiments of the people.

In addition to this reliance on superdelegates, so much else is wrong with the current presidential nomination process: the tremendous cost that ties candidates’ fates to wealthy donors; the unbalanced calendar that disproportionately favors a few unrepresentative states; and, most of all, the fundamentally undemocratic nature of the caucuses that are still used in many states. All three conditions favor hyperactive political elites over ordinary voters, but caucuses are a particularly egregious assault on democratic equality. The caucus structure disenfranchises voters, discouraging ordinary citizens with its substantial time demands, and essentially silencing those who must work during caucus hours. Worst of all, they strip voters of the anonymity that has always been democracy’s best defense against demagoguery and coercion.

As vast as the structural problems with caucusing are, however, it still produces a more just and accurate reflection of public sentiment than do the biases of party leaders. Both Democratic and Republican national committees would do well to avoid a repeat of this election’s mistakes and abolish unpledged delegates before 2012. It will not be enough, of course; only wholesale reform can fully restore democratic ideals to the presidential nomination process. But it would be a start.