Confused about super delegates, their role and their affiliations?
So was Vermonter Eric Warren, who has put in the time to sort it all out for you. Warren, who works for a technology company by day, has spent the last three months working deep into the night to compile info from newspaper articles and party sites on all the super delegates and putting them together on one Web site. Click
HERE to get there.
He did this not because he had a great fondness for these people, but because he, like many, was unnerved that these super delegates felt like they had the super powers to choose who will be the Democratic candidate for president.
When he launched the idea it was hard to tell whether the Democratic Party might really let a handful of self-appointed powerful people go into a back room and decide who the candidate should be. Since then, it appears that maybe just about everybody realizes what a bad idea that would be, but still the battle over super delegates is key to the presidential race.
Warren is also collecting signatures for a petition on the site from Democrats who want to declare that the people should decide the candidate. It goes partly like this:
What we are calling for is simply this - the Democratic Party leadership must not overturn the ultimate choice of the people. We can wait until every state primary and caucus event has occured to count those pledged delegates, but at the end of the process they are ultimately what must be counted.
Warren, who lives in Bradford and has a family and a life, realizes this info only has a shelf life of a few months, but he's thinking the Web site could evolve into a political information source. Check it out.
- Terri Hallenbeck