Friday, May 9th, 2008...6:06 am
What Is Up With That?
In a moment of masochism, I checked out Politico’s Superdelegate page. Here was something that struck me: American Samoa has six superdelegates; Arizona has eleven.
That’s right. Arizona has nearly 90 times as many people, but barely gets twice as many supers as American Samoa. American Samoa has about 67,000 people, a bit fewer than Apache County.
A couple of things can skew the number of super delegates. For example, a state that elects more Democratic congressmen will have more superdelegates. This is why, for example, New York has so many more supers than Texas, even though Texas is larger. When territories or smaller states have democratic members of congress or governors, the add-on effect is more noticeable because the delegations are so small to begin with.
Something else that is noticeable is that four DNC members are listed for American Samoa, while Arizona has five. Once again, the DNC members aren’t strictly by population. For example, each state or territory’s Democratic Party chair and highest ranking vice chair is a DNC member. This is in addition to members of the DNC that are apportioned by population. The territories are each apportioned two members, which would be the minimum for a state. Given that the territories are very small compared to the states, this makes their delegation larger in proportion to their size. So, up until a few years ago when Arizona was allocated a third elected DNC slot, we had as many DNC votes as American Samoa, Guam or the Virgin Islands.
Well, yes and no. In the past, we have had members of the DNC from Arizona by dint of leadership in groups like the Young Democrats of America and the National Conference of State Legislatures. We also had one that was a former DNC chair that lived here in Arizona. For many years, Fred DuVal was an at-large DNC member because of his being Fred DuVal.
Anyway, ya got all that?
5 Comments
May 9th, 2008 at 7:09 am
Another interesting piece. Keep it up
May 9th, 2008 at 8:17 am
Ted,
You’re just a hateful, rascist, xenophobe! You hate Somoans, Guamians, and Virgin Islanders! You fascist!
…just thought I’d throw some of the same BS rhetoric you communists use against right-wingers back at you. It’s BS in this case, just like it’s BS when you label the anti-immigration crowd as rascists.
May 9th, 2008 at 9:23 am
I label the anti-immigration crowd racists when they act like racists. If your buddies don’t like it they oughta cut down on the racial rhetoric.
May 9th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Tedski doesn’t hate Samoans…. he just prefers Thin Mints
May 10th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Hey AntiF– Tedski saying it’s not cool that territories of the USA are disproportionately represented in the Democratic primary process is not the same as an elected official standing up in a dignified body and calling people desperate enough to pay murderers thousands of dollars just for the chance to feed their families “illiterate peasants.”
Just thought I should point that out.
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