Bernie Sanders won big this weekend, beating Clinton soundly in the Alaska, Washington and Hawaii caucuses. That makes it now five of the last six contests Sanders has won by landslides.
You’d never guess that, however, by looking at their superdelegate ratio.
Superdelegates are unpledged delegates that can vote for whichever candidate they choose, regardless of primary outcomes. They are unique to the Democratic Party. Currently, Clinton has 469 and Sanders only has 29.
Washington residents who voted for Sanders are especially peeved. Their candidate won almost 73 percent of the vote, yet it appears a majority of the state’s superdelegates already decided on Clinton long ago. One Sanders supporter named Charlie Best started a petition on MoveOn.org to demand better from the Democratic Party. “Let the voters decide,” Best argues.
“To be able to have these delegates that have no accountability to the Democratic Party members seems to me to be a tad undemocratic,” Best said in an interview. “When the party base speaks, the leadership should follow the lead of the party base.”
The superdelegate system, Best concludes, is “extremely undemocratic and probably should be abolished.”
As of Sunday night, the petition had 23,000 signatures.
Sanders himself has sounded off on the imbalance of superdelegates, but notes they may be starting to switch their support to him as they consider which candidate can succeed in the general election.
"I think a lot of the superdelegates are now beginning to look at which Democratic candidate is the best place to defeat Donald Trump. I think some of them are beginning to understand that it's Bernie Sanders."