For those unfamiliar with the Democratic nomination process, the candidates need to acquire a certain number of delegates to become the party's nominee. Delegates are won from victories in caucuses or primary elections, depending on the regulations set by each state's Democratic Committee. Delegates are awarded proportionately, so no candidate can run off with the candidacy before most states get the chance to vote. Then at the party convention, the superdelegates pledge their votes.

The process may seem strange, but it was designed to keep someone like Stephen Colbert from getting the nomination. Superdelegates are the elected and nonelected officials within the party. A superdelegate is worth roughly ten thousand "regular" votes, and if the bloc is organized, it can veto a candidate selected by the American public.

The superdelegate vote has been negligible in recent elections. In fact, most voters are just learning about the process this year. Not since 1984 have superdelegates played a role in deciding the nominee, and never have they been as crucial as this year.

In 1984, the superdelegates helped Walter Mondale cross the threshold of delegates needed to win the nomination, but the majority of the popular vote and pledged delegates were already on his side.

This year, the Democratic process might not be so lucky. Superdelegates are likely to decide the Democratic nominee for President, as the popular vote and number of pledged delegates are in a virtual dead heat between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Though Obama holds a slight lead in both the popular vote and pledged delegates, that could change between now and the convention, which seems more and more likely to be brokered (the term for when a nominee is unclear going into the party's convention).

Both campaigns have aggressively courted the support of these superdelegate voters, but the superdelegates are under no obligation to vote until the convention. In fact, they can throw their support behind a candidate from the beginning and change their vote at the last minute. Due to the nature of this arrangement, the campaigns are scrambling to court these crucial votes.

But who are these superdelegates? Mostly they are current and former elected officials - Senators, Representatives, or Governors. Yet, there is a large portion of the Superdelegate population who are strategists, analysts, and activists. Enter: Jason Rae.

Rae is a 21-year-old junior at Marquette University in Wisconsin. He isn't old enough to have voted in a Presidential election before, and he is a superdelegate. He was able to win the Chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Committee by age eighteen, so he gets to vote at the convention in August.

Rae is very accomplished and will likely go on to do great things, but his vote should not count 10,000 times more than anyone else's. If one were to live to be 4018 years old, their lifetime of voting would only then be equal to Rae's first vote for President.

Perhaps it is time to move towards a national primary, with a winner-take-all format. That way, instead of states like Iowa and New Hampshire getting all the early attention, then each state getting a rally or two before their primary or caucus, maybe the attention political candidates give to the public would be proportional to the population of the areas they visit. Then states would stop jockeying for primary position, and the Florida/ Michigan debacle could be avoided in the future.

In a winner-take-all format there could be no question of whether delegates were distributed fairly, and pundits and activists would have just as much say as everyone else. Even if the party didn't want to distribute delegates on a state-by-state basis, they could allot delegates by region. But a national primary would eliminate a lot of pandering, speculation, and the need for gigantic sums of money to be a contender.

How nice it would be, you know, if things were fair. Until then, the superdelegates will make the call they feel is too close for the public to judge.

Tell us what you think. Write Spectrum at editor@mcckc.edu.

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