TRANSITION | Forming the next government
24 March 2008
Delegate System Aims to Give Nominating Power to the People
Rules for selecting delegates vary among states' political parties
Washington -- U.S. voters may cast ballots for a presidential nominee in a primary or caucus, but they do not select their parties’ nominees directly. That power is given to delegates -- appointed party representatives -- who cast votes at the national conventions held in the summer before the general election.
The system of appointing delegates to select party nominees is complex and has been revised over decades to ensure fairness.
"Every democratic country, every country with representative government, has a problem in choosing its leader," Michael Barone, senior writer for U.S. News & World Report, told journalists at the Foreign Press Center in Washington in February. "Nobody has devised an entirely satisfactory way to do it."
HISTORY OF PRIMARIES
The first U.S. national conventions were held in the 1830s, but the average American had little effect on them. There were delegates, but political bosses and backroom deals typically had great influence on the nominations.
Governor Robert La Follette, angered by the system after he and other Wisconsin delegates were unable to participate in the 1904 Republican convention, convinced his state legislature to pass a bill letting voters, not party leaders, select convention delegates.
In 1910, Oregon became the first state to make its delegates pledge their votes to the candidate who won the state's primary. By 1916, 26 states were holding primaries.
Over the next few years, as the primary system exerted only limited influence and party bosses retained substantial power, many Americans lost interest in voting in primaries and candidates tended to ignore those states' contests. By 1935, eight states had eliminated primaries.
The popularity of primaries resurfaced thanks in part to the rise of television, a medium that allowed relatively unknown candidates to gain fame and influence by pulling off victories in early primaries. Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver’s victory over President Harry S. Truman in the 1952 New Hampshire primary prompted Truman to announce he would not seek re-election. Despite winning 12 of 15 primaries, Kefauver did not win the nomination.
In 1968, Democrats nominated Vice President Hubert Humphrey -- who had won no primaries -- as their presidential nominee, a move that angered many Democrats.
In the aftermath, Democrats appointed a commission to review the nomination process. The result was a new system, implemented by both Democrats and Republicans, designed to put more power into the people's hands. The system encouraged states to bind their delegates to vote for the candidate their fellow citizens favored. As a result, the number of states holding primary contests, and the number of Americans voting in them, rose.
THE DELEGATE SYSTEM TODAY
Each party awards delegates differently, because the parties have "two different ideas of fairness," Barone said.
The Democrats award delegates proportionally, so that "if you get 60 percent of the vote in the state, you get 60 percent of the delegates," Barone explained. However, Barone said, it is not quite that simple because a candidate must get at least 15 percent of the vote to be awarded delegates.
The Republican system allows state parties to award all their delegates to the candidate who receives the most votes. This allows for a second-place candidate to catch up by winning a state with a large number of delegates. It also tends to produce a party nominee more quickly than proportional awards.
The delegates -- the people who go to national conventions and cast their pledged votes -- are selected in a variety of ways based on guidelines established by state parties.
Prospective delegates usually must file paperwork declaring their interest, much as candidates do to be placed on the ballot. The list of potential delegates then are narrowed down in a variety of ways:
• A state convention can select delegates from a pool of those selected at local conventions. Local conventions sometimes are held before the primary or caucus.
• Delegates are selected after the primary when it is clear how many delegates are needed to represent each candidate. For example, the Virginia 8th Congressional District’s Democratic convention will elect four Barack Obama delegates, three Hillary Clinton delegates and alternates (with approximately equal numbers of male and female delegates).
• Delegates are selected in the primary. For example, if a Montgomery County, Maryland, Democratic primary voter wanted to vote for Hillary Clinton, he or she not only would cast a vote for Clinton, but also specifically for Nancy M. Floreen, or Mary Boergers or Shu-Ping Chang (delegates pledged to cast their vote for Clinton).
Unpledged delegates are utilized in both national conventions. These delegates, typically party leaders, can cast their ballot as they choose. Democrats have many more of these delegates, commonly referred to as superdelegates, and they can affect the nomination in a close contest.
The role of superdelegates often is debated, Barone said. Some Americans object to the power of superdelegates to nominate a candidate who did not receive the most votes in primaries and caucuses. However, superdelegates know the candidates personally and have "a deeper knowledge of them than the general voting public does. So we want to have their advice," Barone said.
For more, see “Superdelegates May Decide Democratic Nominee.”
