About 800 people will be super-delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Denver this August, and a top Iowa Democrat fears the use of super-delegates might bring un-democratic results to the presidential nominating process. Iowa Senator Tom Harkin is, based on his elected office, a super-delegate, but he says the whole idea needs to be chucked.
Harkin says: "I’ve never felt comfortable with it anyway but it never mattered much one way or the other in the past. This came in in 1984, I remember. It’s just not right. Just because I’m an elected official or you’re a governor or you’re a party chair or something like that, you ought to have some super-delegate status and not run for delegate."
Many projections indicate neither of the party’s candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, will get enough delegates to win the nomination outright, meaning, it might be up to the super-delegates to make the final choice. Those people are -not- bound to vote for anyone but the candidate they personally chose. Harkin says that system should be scrapped.
"This idea of super-delegates is something that we’ve gotta’ do away with. It gives these super-delegates a little bit too much power to decide a close thing at the end and it shouldn’t be that way," Harkin says. Super-delegate status is given to various elected officials, including governors and members of congress, in addition to select party leaders and activists.