Super illusion

American democracy is an illusion. Before this country continues to force-feed democracy to the far corners of the earth, we’d do well to evaluate our own sketchy democratic process.\nEspecially troubling is the inclusion of “superdelegates” who vote for the Democratic party’s presidential nominee. Political leaders, totalling 842 in all, including Democratic governors, members of Congress, former presidents Clinton and Carter and Democratic National Committee members get a strongly-weighted vote that could help swing the eventual nomination toward Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. In other words, it is possible that the people’s choice could be trumped by those already in power.\nFor example, even though Clinton finished in third place after the first Iowa caucuses, she was still in first place for the nomination with 69 more delegates than Obama, thanks largely to the superdelegates backing her.\nThe Democratic Party created superdelegates in order to ensure some power and control over the nomination process. Democrats wanted to guarantee that the American people would not select a nominee who was too radical, too out of sync with the people already in power. In other words, all this talk of “change” that Clinton and Obama deliver becomes questionable when we know the powerful party elites work to nominate someone who will best maintain the status quo.\nWe’re told that all voices are equal in our political process. But the superdelegates suggest that some are more “equal” than others.\nThis week’s Super Tuesday is also a super farce. For that matter, the primary elections as a whole slap the democratic process in the face. Why do the good folks of Iowa and New Hampshire get to set the tone for the entire race for the presidential nomination? (“Tradition” is not an acceptable answer.) By the time people of Indiana, North Carolina, Nebraska and Oregon vote in May, the nominee will likely be determined. In essence, those states don’t get to vote. \nCitizens in only six states had the option to vote for John Edwards. The votes in those six states forced a strong candidate out of the race before the other 44 states got to weigh in. Edwards’ own constituents in North Carolina won’t get to cast a ballot for him.\nA more democratic primary election process would set one day for national primaries so that some states don’t control the nomination process.\nImagine if we elected a president that way? Wait, we do. But instead of discarding the opinion of an entire state, we just ignore the votes of a large percentage of each state. The Electoral College system erases the red votes from the blue states and the blue votes from the red states. No state is 100 percent Democratic or Republican, but our final tallies treat them that way.\n“Go vote!” we say. “It’s your civic duty!” But don’t be upset when we don’t really count your vote.