EDITORIAL: Democrats’ super-delegate process slams Sanders

While Sen. Bernie Sanders' supporters have worked tirelessly (and quite successfully) to convince their fellow Americans to "Feel the Bern," they might very well be the ones feeling burned when the Democratic Party selects its presidential nominee.

Sen. Sanders' supporters have helped him virtually tie Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus, beat her quite decisively in the New Hampshire primary and finish a respectable five points behind her right here in Nevada. But thanks to the DNC's hypocritical super-delegate process, Sen. Sanders left those three states with 13 fewer delegates than Mrs. Clinton.

The Democrats like to rip the GOP's push for voter ID as being unfair, but, as National Review's Jim Geraghty pointed out last week, if the DNC's average grass-roots voter's vote "isn't going to count because of the way the party system works, I guess requiring voter ID isn't so disenfranchising after all, huh?"

While both parties have super delegates, those in the Republican party account for 7 percent of the nominating vote and are bound, by GOP convention rules, to vote according to state primary results. Democratic super delegates, on the other hand, control 15 percent of the nominating process and can vote for whomever they wish. According to these rules, only blowout victories in congressional districts and other areas would give Sen. Sanders a legitimate shot at winning the nomination.

The process is a total joke. Despite all the excitement around Sen. Sanders' campaign, Mrs. Clinton has already collected 502 delegates ("earning" is a complete misnomer), compared with Sen. Sanders' paltry 70. Of those totals, Mrs. Clinton has a whopping 451 super delegates, while Sen. Sanders has a meager 19. Again, this is despite Sen. Sanders fighting to a virtual tie in Iowa — only to come away with 21 delegates, to Hillary's 29 — and hammering her by 22 points in New Hampshire — where both candidates got 15 delegates. Then, Saturday in Nevada, Clinton got 52.7 percent of the vote, with Sanders receiving 47.3, which of course left Clinton with 60 percent of the state's delegates — 20 to Sanders' 15.

The primaries/caucuses are run by the Democratic National Committee, which is not a government organization and can therefore make up whatever rules it would like. But when you consider that Democrats purport to be the party that hears the public's voice — the party that supposedly wants to allow as many people to vote as possible, and as easily as possible — the entire nomination process is exposed as a sham.

The Democratic Party screams disenfranchisement when Republicans bring up the need for voter ID to combat fraud, yet supports disenfranchising thousands of primary/caucus voters with its super-delegate process. All Mrs. Clinton has to do is show up, and the coronation is complete. In this case, Sen. Sanders and his supporters are getting dramatically short-changed. If the Democrats really believe all their rhetoric, they would get rid of super delegates.