In states with primaries, who chooses the delegates for the national conventions? Can anyone be a delegate? Or do you have to be a “party insider”? How does it work?
(This might be an IMHO question, because there are 50-something answers, but they are factual answers.)
In the New York Democratic primary, for instance, you voted for both the candidates and for delegates pledged to them. The delegates were distributed by how many votes they got.
Other states aren’t as complicated, but usually the elected delegates are people who are active in the presidential candidate’s campaign and are selected according to primary results. Superdelegates are party officials.
In Pennsylvania, wasn’t the candidate supposed to submit a list of approved delegates?
There are indeed 100-something answers (just for the two major parties), and even within a state, the process can vary as between district-level and at-large delegates.
In Illinois, district-level delegates appear on the ballot. The presidential preference vote determines how many district delegates go to each candidate, and within each candidate’s slate, the delegate vote rank orders the delegates to determine which ones win.
In other words, suppose a district elects five delegates. There will be five delegates (usually) supporting each candidate on the ballot. (The presidential candidates have right of refusal to prevent unfriendly or unwanted “Trojan Horse” delegate candidates from appearing.) If Obama wins three delegates and Clinton two in that district, then the top three Obama delegate vote-getters and the top two Clinton delegate vote-getters win.
At-large (state level) delegates are allocated based on the statewide vote, and delegates are assigned by the respective campaigns at the state conventions.
Then the Democrats have PLEO’s (Party Leaders and Elected Officials), not to be confused with superdelegates. It’s extremely complicated, and all of this is just for one party in one state.
For example, here’s how it works in Minnesota, for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party.
‘SuperDelegates’ - automatically delegates because of their position; not committed to any candidate.
Then we had a binding Presidential Preference vote at our Feb 5th Precinct Caucuses, and the rest of the delegates must be proportional to the votes there (which were basically 1/3 Clinton, 2/3 Obama).
Some national delegates are selected at the 8 Congressional District Conventions. The remainder were selected at the State Convention last weekend. First they divide into subcaucuses – the Clinton people go off to one room, and the Obama people into another. They each elect their own delegates separately. We require gender balance, so they elect equal numbers of men and women.
We have 2 rounds of elections. The first is for PLEO (Party Leaders/Elected Officials) – we have a small number of delegate spots reserved for them, to make sure that group is represented. (Frankly, the requirements to be a ‘Party Leader’ are so low – holding any office from Precinct Associate Chair up – that nearly anyone could run.)
The second round is for the majority of the delegate spots. Any delegate can run for this, and many do. Last weekend, the Obama subcaucus had 86 men and 39 women running for 7 spots each. They chose to send the top vote getters as delegates, and tne next ones as alternates.
So in the end, people are elected from each level as delegates to go on to the next higher level, with the final ones going to the National Convention.