According to Bloomberg, the fix is in, and Hillary will win the nomination, regardless of how voters cast their ballots. There are a total of 4,491 delegates who will decide the nominee for the Democratic party’s presidential run. Of these, there are 713 superdelegates, who are unelected and accountable to only the leaders of the Democratic party.
So 16 percent of the party’s votes are cast by delegates who do not answer to the voters, even though this is the party that claims that each and every person should have a vote, even convicted felons and illegal immigrants. By securing those superdelegates, Hillary ensures that there is a built in margin that any challenger must overcome.
Now don’t think that I am in any way saying that the Republicans are any better. The Republican party doesn’t use superdelegates. Instead, they have a system where there are “hard” and “soft” delegates. Hard delegates are required to vote for the candidate on the first ballot cast at the convention. After the first ballot, they may vote for whomever they choose. Soft delegates may vote for any candidate they choose, even on the first ballot they cast. There are complicated and vague rules that make this about as clear as Obama’s foreign policy.
At the republican convention, there are a total of 2,380 delegates.
There are 126 delegates, about 6 percent of the total, who are complete free agents. These are party leaders and elected officials, three per state or territory, who will go to the convention unbound to any candidate.
Then there are 84 delegates, or 3.5% of the total, who will be selected at state conventions, or appointed by a committee of Republican officials in the state, with no direct or indirect relationship to the popular vote in these states. States like Pennsylvania, Illinois and Louisiana select some of their delegates trough this method, for instance, even though they also pick some through their primaries. These 84 delegates are officially unbound. However, influential Republicans within each state will have some say about just who they are and about which candidate they are most likely to prefer.
Another group of 188 (7.9% of total delegates) who are picked through a caucus process but are officially unbound to any candidate. In addition to being unbound, these delegates are usually also picked in a way that is separate from the popular vote that is held in each state.
…and the rules go on and on. In short, the voters of each state actually have very little say in who the Republican nominee is, because 16.7% of the delegates are selected by the party leadership, just like the Democratic party does at their convention.
This is why we get the same candidates in election after election, because the leaders of each party want it that way. Our choice between the Democrat or the Republican really isn’t a choice at all, because the real choice has already been made in the boardrooms of the ones controlling the purse strings of the two political parties.
Since the rules are set up to deny any new parties to the arena, and the number of Congressional seats has been fixed at a maximum of 411 for over a century, even though the US population has more than tripled in that time span, meaning that we are less represented now that at any other point in history, your vote literally doesn’t count.
Which brings me back to the title of this post: “If voting actually changed anything, it would already be illegal”
