The Orbis

Issue date: 2/25/08 Section: News/Features

Sen. Barack Obama is a superdelegate, naturally.

Americans are led to believe that the era of smoky back room elections, where cigar-munching party insiders choose candidates, has long since passed. It turns out that bastions of this old-fashioned system still remain alive and well within party structures. Instead of allowing voters to control the entire candidate nomination process, the Democratic Party maintains significant control over the selection through superdelegates. "Superdelegate" is a term that has been thrown around a lot during the close race between Clinton and Obama, but few people seem to clearly understand who superdelegates are, or what exactly they do.

There are seven distinct categories of Democratic delegates, but the superdelegate divisions are the most controversial and disproportionately powerful. The word "superdelegate" never appears in the 2008 Delegate Selection Rules for the Democratic National Convention. They are officially referred to as PLEOs (Party Leaders and Elected Officials) and are selected through a complex series of criteria.

Basically, any current Democratic governor, former or current Democratic member of Congress, President, Vice President or Chair of the Democratic National Committee is eligible for PLEO status, and would be known informally as a superdelegate.

In this close race for the Democratic nomination, the 796 superdelegates will account for roughly 20% of the total delegates that choose the Democratic candidate for president.

The list of superdelegates includes a lot of pretty important Democrats. A state-by-state roster boasts such prestigious names as Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi and even the two current candidates themselves - don't forget that Obama and Clinton are still both Senators in their spare time.

But there are also plenty of unknowns to flesh out the list. Their simple status as members of the Democratic National Committee is achievement enough for 327 people to attain superdelegate status.

The media draws distinctions between pledged and unpledged superdelegates when tallying delegate counts for the candidates, but the Democratic Party's rules do not regulate superdelegates' public statements of support.

Although many superdelegates have chosen to announce endorsements, they are under no official obligation to announce their preference and may change their position at any time.

Continued...

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