by Robert Tippett

Created on: March 01, 2008   Last Updated: March 19, 2008

There sure are a lot of people up in arms about super delegates. Oh my word, it is so undemocratic for some leaders of some party (Democrats specifically) not to heed the will of the people. My oh my. Why don't they let the people choose the candidates?

Uh, excuse me, but that really is the ultimate goal behind the super delegates, at least in theory. Let me explain how it goes.

When the popular vote of any state is tabulated, after any election, and on a good day, meaning when some very invigorating candidates are running against one another, you will find that no more than a third of the registered voters will have actually wandered away from their sofas, far enough to go out and cast a vote. That means that the delegates have to be given to a candidate who did not win a true majority of the people's vote. He or she just won more votes, of the minority of votes that were cast. This is typical for all elections, but primary elections have historically shown more couch potatoes (non-voters) than general elections.

Take for instance the 2006 Texas Governor's race. Texas had over 16.6 million people eligible to vote for that election (anyone 18 or older). Of those eligible, only 13.1 million people were actually registered so they could vote. That difference of 3.5 million people represents 21% of eligible voters, who were not able to cast a vote, had they wanted to. Then, of those 13.1 million registered Texas voters, just under 4.4 million actually voted in the November general election. That was a whopping 33.6% turnout of the registered voters; but, it was only 26.4% of total of eligible voters in Texas. Basically, that means that if one candidate garnered every single one of those 4.4 million votes, 75% of the people eligible to vote in Texas would have not voted for the winner. That is not true democracy, where a minimum of 50% plus 1 is needed for the majority will of the people to be met.

In that Texas race, incumbent Rick Perry ran against five opponents, including a Democratic candidate, an Independent candidate, a Republican Independent candidate, a Green Party candidate and a Libertarian Party candidate. The Independents running was Kinky Friedman, a comedian / singer, who people saw as another Pat Paulsen / Stephen Colbert type of pretend candidate.

The total of the vote for Rick Perry was just over 1.7 million, which was good enough to be re-elected as Governor. However, the total for the top three candidates opposed to Perry was just under 2.7 million.

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