By: Alvin Wilson Staff Writer
What if I told you your favorite presidential candidate could lose in Oregon’s primary, even if they win by a large margin?
It’s entirely possible, at least in the Democratic primary elections, for a candidate to lose the delegate count while winning the popular vote. This undemocratic phenomenon has happened before, and it will continue to happen so long as the Democratic party continues its use of superdelegates.
In Wyoming, a state that has only 14 pledged delegates, Bernie Sanders won by 12 percentage points. Since the state had such little delegates to divide, Sanders and Clinton split them evenly. Despite this, Sanders lost the state because of Clinton’s support from its superdelegates.
This isn’t a rant about Sanders’ losses, but it is a rant about the Democratic party taking power away from voters.
28 percent of Wyoming’s delegates are superdelegates, meaning 28 percent of the state’s voice is taken from the people and given to party officials.
In Oregon, 13 of the 74 total delegates are superdelegates. In 2008, Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton in Oregon and received 31 delegates to her 21. But if all of Oregon’s superdelegates had supported Clinton instead of Obama, she would have won the delegate count despite losing the popular vote by 18 percent.
The American people are deeply disenfranchised from the current political system, and it doesn’t take much digging to figure out why. At every turn, party officials can change the rules of the game to suit their agendas, and use their power to crush any candidate that goes against the grain.
On Feb. 11, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chair of the Democratic National Committee, admitted to CNN’s Jake Tapper that superdelegates were designed to keep grassroots organizers from winning primaries.
With systems such as the electoral college and superdelegates, it seems as though America’s political parties are trying to silence as many voters as possible—and it’s working.
For a party that gets its name from the word democracy, the Democratic party uses one of the most undemocratic processes possible to nominate its candidate for president.
