Just when we thought it might be over, Super Tuesday turned out to be far from super. Traditionally, the presidential nominees are often decided based upon the results of this single day of voting in which nearly half of our states hold their primaries. However, even with the huge amount of delegates handed out on Tuesday, there remains quite a battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The delegate process can be extremely confusing, largely due to the differences from state to state in regards to how delegates are won and how they are pledged. Some states hold caucuses while others hold primaries to determine the proportionate delegate winners. And the different types of delegates available create a system that has the potential to strip away the voting power of the common citizen.

Regardless of how each individual state’s delegates are pledged, the resulting delegates cast votes for a nominee during the Democratic Party Convention on August 25th in Denver. The presidential nominee is ultimately based upon who receives a majority of the nationwide delegate votes. A little confusing? Well, the politicians are glad because inside the confusion is where they will try to decide this nomination on their own, without the help of the American voter.

Shady Delegate Mathematics
Only Washington could come up with a system such as this one. It is all based on the total delegate count and the magic number to win the Democratic nomination is set at 2,025 delegates since there are a total of 4,049 available delegates.

Now just to make things difficult, and corrupt for that matter, 796 of these delegates are considered superdelegates. These special delegates largely consist of members of Congress, governors, national committee members, party leaders and even former office holders. Most troubling, these unique delegates vote at their own discretion and do not truly represent the public’s voice. Nevertheless, they still have the power to account for about 40% of the delegate votes needed to win the Democratic nomination.

And to make things worse, the standard pledged delegates that have been and will continue to be decided in the primaries and caucuses around the country are not necessarily guaranteed. Amazingly, pledged delegates are not bound in any way to vote for any particular candidate and the candidates can even dismiss delegates whose support they find unreliable. So much for a representative democratic government.

The Delegate Scorecard
Coming into Super Tuesday, the race for the Democratic nomination was extremely tight, but Obama held onto a narrow lead over Clinton. Or was it Clinton with a narrow lead over Obama? Well, actually it was both – and that was largely due to this unrepresentative electoral system we have.

Obama had won 63 pledged delegates to Clinton’s 48 pledged delegates as a result of the public primaries and caucuses already held (IA, NH, NV, SC). However, many of the superdelegates had already been committed, including 184 for Clinton and only 95 for Obama. Therefore, Clinton actually had a lead of 232 to 158 over Obama in the total combined delegate count heading into the big day, even though Obama was winning the public vote.

Clearly, it looked like Super Tuesday would be the day that would establish a strong frontrunner and possibly lock up the nomination – something that historically takes place and would be expected on a day that nearly half of the nation votes.

Not So Super Tuesday
With 22 states and the territory of American Samoa holding primaries and caucuses on Tuesday, there were 1,681 pledged delegates on the line in the Democratic race – accounting for a total of about 83% of the delegate votes needed to win the nomination. Traditionally called Super Tuesday, mainstream media had been billing it as Super Duper Tuesday this time around, due to the fact that it was the largest number of primary contests in a single day in our nation’s history.

However, it appears that all of the hype was simply to make us, the common voters, feel involved in the process. In all reality, the public vote for pledged delegates really only holds value when there is one strong frontrunner in the race, resulting in a strong public vote that creates a delegate deficit large enough that the superdelegates cannot make up the difference to give a challenger the nomination.

But in situations such as this one when two candidates are so close in the delegate count, the troubled nomination process shuts out the common voter as if we cannot be trusted to make such a decision. Ultimately, this leaves the nomination power solely to the superdelegates.

The Fuzzy Results
And after Super Tuesday’s results, it appears that this might be exactly what is unfolding. In the popular vote, Obama won 13 states (AK, AL, CO, CT, DE, GA, ID, IL, KS, MN, MO, ND, and UT) across the 23 contests, while Clinton took 8 states and a territory (AR, AS, AZ, CA, MA, NJ, NY, OK, and TN). At the time of this writing, the final contest, New Mexico, is still up in the air, although Clinton holds an extremely small lead with 99% of the vote in. In the end, Obama will likely win 13 contests, while Clinton will likely win 10, including 4 of the top 5 largest states. That’s a dead heat.

As for the 1,681 pledged delegates available on Super Tuesday, it is again a remakably close race. As of the time of this writing, Obama is holding a narrow lead over Clinton after being awarded a total of 820 pledged delegates to Clinton’s 814 pledged delegates. There remains 47 pledged delegates still to be awarded as the final numbers come in, but early projections put the candidates within 4 pledged delegates of each other once all 1,681 Super Tuesday delegates are awarded. That’s a dead heat.

And on a day that saw a record level of voter turnout for the Democrats, the overall vote count across all 23 contests was also amazingly close. Of nearly 15 million votes that were casted on Tuesday around the nation, early estimates are reporting that the two candidates will be within just 40,000 votes of each other once they are all counted - about a 0.5% difference nationally. That’s a dead heat.

Including all primaries and caucuses to date at the time of this writing, Obama has now accumulated 883 pledged delegates, which leads Clinton’s total of 862 pledged delegates. However, the Democrats report that Clinton currently has a total of 204 officially announced superdelegates to Obama’s collection of just 116 superdelegates. So, even though Obama is leading in popular pledged delegates, the powerful superdelegates are currently putting Clinton in the lead by an overall delegate count of 1066 to 999 in the race to 2025 – the magic number. No matter how you cut it, that’s a dead heat.

If you got lost in any of that, remember, that is what the powers that be are hoping for.

Super Duper Delegates
It looks like the public’s voice can only keep the races close by voting for standard pledged delegates, which again are not even guaranteed. In the end, the Democratic race may just be decided by the superdelegates at a brokered convention late this summer – something which has not happened in decades. If that were to happen, then there is no telling what the outcome may be as the superdelegates can even change their previous commitments and vote for either candidate at the last minute of the convention if they wish.

You might just be surprised at who some of these powerful superdelegates are. For starters, both Senator Clinton and former President Bill Clinton are superdelegates – I wonder where their votes are going. Also, Senator Obama and Tom Daschle, former Senate Majority Leader and Co-Chairman of Obama’s campaign, are also superdelegates – again, I wonder where their votes are going. While these political power players are clearly committed, there are also many other notable names among the superdelegates that have yet to endorse either candidate.

Some of the big names include recently departed Democratic candidates such as John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Dennis Kucinich, as well as former Vice President Al Gore and former President Jimmy Carter, in addition to some other recognizable names such as Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, Russ Feingold, John Murtha, and Kwame Kilpatrick. To put this into perspective, these 12 individual superdelegates just mentioned will collectively hold as much power in the decision for the Democratic nominee as the entire state of Wyoming.

While many superdelegates have already pledged their support and votes for one candidate, it is expected that many others will withhold their support until the convention, even though any superdelegate vote can be changed at anytime. If the Democratic race remains close up to that point, it will allow a small group of extremely powerful people to negotiate amongst themselves and move their votes over to one side, ultimately deciding the nominee.

Super Duper Tuesday? Not quite. It is more like Super Duper Delegates.

Last Chance To Be Counted
There are still over 20 primaries and caucuses remaining, including some big delegate states. Most notable, Texas with 193 pledged delegates and Ohio with 141 pledged delegates are on the line March 4th, as well as 158 pledged delegates from Pennsylvania on April 22nd. And if it is still not settled at that point, North Carolina may be a big state way down the road on May 6th with 115 pledged delegates up for grabs.

These four states collectively account for about 30% of the total delegate count needed to lock up the Democratic nomination. So there still remains a chance that American voters will have an opportunity to decide who their candidate will be, which would effectively take the power back from the superdelegates.

The proportionate pledged delegates still remaining in other states coupled with these four power states provide enough leverage for the people’s voice to be heard. However, if the Democratic race remains as tight as it is now, we will once again see an election decided by a few powerful politicians, regardless of what the public vote may be.

The Broken Electoral System
We all remember what happened in 2000 when Al Gore won the popular vote in the general election, but George Bush won the presidency by way of the Electoral College. Well, it appears that we may be looking at another situation in which the popular vote will not be the deciding factor again.

I feel that both Obama and Clinton have the ability to put together an administration that could get this country moving in the right direction – clearly more so than the Republican candidates who, for the most part, seem to argue over who supports Bush’s failed policies more. I would be content with either candidate; however, I want the American people to make that decision, not the politicians.

Our entire electoral system, from the nomination process to the general election, is in desperate need of change. When will we have a true representative democratic government in which a vote actually counts as a vote? When will our government actually return the power of deciding our leaders to the common people?

The answer is not anytime soon, if ever. They simply do not trust us to make such a decision, so the system is setup to let the most powerful of politicians make up our minds for us. The solution is to increase voter turnout so that our voice gains strength. But in the end, if a race is tight, as it currently is between Obama and Clinton, the only electorate that counts is a group of Washington insiders, otherwise known as superdelegates… and they do not care what you think.

- Rapáil Eamon