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From SuperDelegates.org - Information about the 2008 DNC Superdelegates

1 superdelegates.org
2 The Superdelegates
3 The History of the Democratic Party Superdelegate
4 View on Google Maps or Google Earth
5 The Democratic Delegate Process

superdelegates.org

This site is designed to help you learn more about the 796 DNC superdelegates who will vote in the 2008 Democratic National Convention. This site is not affiliated with the Democratic National Committee, or any campaign. It is a work in progress, and you can help! See the FAQ for more info on how to contribute. We depend on your contribution.

Our list of endorsements started from the great work done by 2008 Democratic Convention Watch.

Superdelegates (see below for more info) get to cast a vote for the nominee at the 2008 Convention, and are not obligated to vote for the candidate who won their state. For that purpose, we want to track which candidate the delegates have endorsed to get an idea of how they would vote at the convention.

We want this site to be comprehensive, and you can help us by adding biographical data to a delegate's page, linking to a press release announcing the delegate's endorsement, and including the general location of the delegate so that we can view the info on Google Maps and Google Earth. If you would like to contribute to this wiki (what's a wiki?), find a page where you have additional information, click "edit" and enter in your info. That's it! With your help, this site will be a useful resource of information about the DNC superdelegates who may very well influence the 2008 Democratic nominee for President.

Latest endorsement count: (Note: this is a comprehensive list, which counts Florida and Michigan superdelegates. Democrats Abroad superdelegates get 1/2 a vote, but are counted individually.)

Uncommitted: 207

Clinton: 286

Obama: 302

superdelegates.org Featured on CNN:

If you'd like to contribute to this site, please see the FAQ for some details about how to easily update the site.

The Superdelegates

How the Superdelegates are selected. This section describes how the individuals who are Superdelegates were, or are, identified and selected.

Superdelegates include:

Democratic members of the House of Representatives
Democratic Senators
Democratic governors
Members of the Democratic National Committee
Former Democratic presidents and vice-presidents
Former Speakers of the House
Former Senate leaders
Former minority leaders in the House or Senate
Former chairs of the Democratic National Committee.

The History of the Democratic Party Superdelegate

As the Democratic Party increased their use of primaries and caucuses to select delegates during the 1960s and 1970s, intra-party criticism continued, with the opinion expressed that some control of the nomination process should remain among party elites. Although the McGovern-Fraser reforms insured significant primary delegate representation by the 1972 National Convention, Democratic presidential defeats in 1972 and 1980, and the surprise success of then-outsider candidate Jimmy Carter's nomination in 1976, increased the call for more control being vested with Party leaders.

Between the 1980 and 1984 conventions, The Hunt Commission submitted reforms to the DNC that called for party leaders to become voting delegates, not just nonvoting attendees per McGovern-Fraser. Then-Governor Jim Hunt (D-NC) led the Commission, which was charged to "give party professionals and elected officials an enhanced role at the conventions." The DNC-Hunt Commission negotiations led to making voting delegate spaces available for "core" elected officials from each state - including Governors, US House members and US Senators, state party officials, and mayors of larger cities. These PLEOs (Party Leaders and Elected Officials) and/or other superdelegate slots - as determined by each state party - were formed in time for the 1984 convention, and have been in place since. [1]

Tad Devine (Gore's chief political consultant) on the purpose of superdelegates (New York Times)

View on Google Maps or Google Earth

View the Superdelegates on Google Maps.
With the Google Earth client installed, you can view the Superdelegates as a layer on Google Earth.

The Democratic Delegate Process

Officially referred to as "unpledged" or "Party Leaders and Elected Official (PLEO) Delegates" in the party bylaws, these delegates will attend the convention as members of their home state delegation and will get to cast a vote for the nominee of the party. Not all PLEOs are superdelegates. In New Mexico, for example, PLEOs are pledged delegates in line with statewide preference at the caucus. Superdelegates are now being referred to by the Hillary Clinton campaign as 'automatic delegates.'

Nothing in the bylaws requires the so-called "Superdelegates" to declare a candidate preference ahead of the convention, and nothing prohibits them from changing their mind once they declare such a preference. For more on the Superdelegates process, Josh Marshall at TalkingPointsMemo.com did a good job explaining how this works: