I want to commend the Gazette for highlighting the obvious and serious problem with the superdelegate system, as illustrated by reporter Dave Eisenstadter in the March 9 issue.
The “political horse trading” that he describes is an outrageous abuse of power by party leaders and a serious danger to democracy. Rather than begging these leaders to vote in accordance with the will of the people in their districts as evidenced by earlier primary votes (and thus producing the same result twice), it makes sense just to abolish the entire superdelegate system.
If superdelegates don’t exist, they can’t override the will of the people on the grounds that they know better.
In fact, the advocacy of that possibility is an extremely arrogant position, which it is clearly evidenced by Hampshire County Register of Deeds Mary Olberding’s comments cited in the article.
According to her, the superdelegate “just has a better understanding than the average person on the street” and supporters of a certain candidate “are ill-informed voters” and, as she puts it, “I’m not sure I want them in the process.”
Wow! The last time I heard that sort of thing I was growing up in Nazi Germany and then in Communist East Germany. They also had party leaders who knew so much better than ordinary folks.
Heinz Kohler
Amherst