Superdelegates offsetting the results of primaries is unconstitutional IMHO

[aidbo]

87. If that scenario was allowable by the party's rules, it could do that.

But who would want to be a member of that political party? Few would want to be a member of the political party that doesn't respect the will of its members.

All I'm saying is that political parties have their own way of selecting nominees. The states allow them to use their infrastructure to conduct votes and caucuses on their behalf (though usually not for free). Those votes and caucuses have to be up to the standards of the states and constitution. As a voting member of that political party, you are essentially 'opting in' to the rules by which they use the results of those votes and caucuses to select their nominee. The people running for the nomination (ie Bernie and Hillary et al) also have agreed to the rules in order to be allowed to run. The Democratic party has delegates and superdelegates, the Republican party (I think) only has delegates, other parties have other ways they select their nominees. I think someone in this thread mentioned how H. Ross Perot started his own party that just had him as the nominee, no vote needed.

The Constitution is agnostic on how a party makes its rules to choose a nominee - you could start a political party that chooses its nominee by having an arm wrestling contest between all its members and whomever wins is the nominee and the runner up is the VP nominee. But odds are that very few people would want to be a member of that party. And if the party were to put up that nominee in the general election, odds are that that party would gather very few votes from the general electorate.

Now! If the party wants to make use of the states' voting apparatus, then that is governed by the Constitution. This article does a good job of explaining why this is the case. http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2015/09/who-controls-primary-elections-and-who-gets-to-vote/

In 1923, Texas passed a law forbidding blacks from participating in the Texas Democratic Party primary. When Dr. L.A. Nixon was denied access to the polls on account of his race, he sued the state of Texas, claiming that the restriction violated his constitutional guarantee of equal protection. The Supreme Court struck down the restriction, with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes writing that it was “hard to imagine a more direct and obvious infringement” of the 14th Amendment.

In response to the Court’s decision, the Texas Democratic Party instituted a rule prohibiting blacks from participating in its primaries, which was similarly challenged as a 14th Amendment violation. But the Court ruled unanimously in favor of the Texas Democratic Party, finding that the situation at hand was fundamentally different than that in the earlier case.

The Court explained that the Democratic Party was a private organization and could determine for itself its eligibility and membership requirements. The scope of the 14th Amendment was constrained by the “state action doctrine,” meaning that it guaranteed equal treatment only under governmental action and could not regulate the actions of private organizations like the Democratic Party.

Nine years later, however, the Court reversed this decision in Smith v. Allwright, in which it adopted a broader conception of “state action.” It reasoned that primary elections are an integral component of general elections and the democratic process. As a result, primaries must be seen as sanctioned by the state and are therefore subject to 14th and 15th Amendment scrutiny. Despite the fact that the Democratic Party was a private organization, the Court acknowledged that disenfranchisement from primary elections is a denial of voting rights and rectified the situation.