States' Rights

There is something peculiarly American about the wide variety of ways that delegates are picked in different states for their national party conventions. Some states have caucuses, some primaries and some caucuses that look like primaries. Some states have winner-take-all for the delegates whereas others divide the delegates proportionately ... sometimes with a minimum threshold of say 10% of the votes ... and sometimes over 50% gets all the delegates, etc.

The Democrat party has something called super-delegates which are undemocratically picked by the Democrat party bosses. And finally the rules as to how delegates vote also vary ... with some pledged to vote for a candidate only on the first convention ballot ... even some delegates have forsworn their commitments and voted errantly.

What's the point of all this delegate rule diversity? To me it is a carryover from the earliest days of this nation when states protected their individual prerogatives and only surrendered some of these prerogatives to the national government when the Constitution was enacted. In fact the Bill of Rights to the Constitution has the Tenth Amendment that says that all rights not delegated to the United States are reserved for the states, or the people.

This is a beautiful concept which lives on in the way party delegates are picked for their respective presidential conventions. Unfortunately, over the years, the Supreme Court has eroded these states' rights to the point were picking of convention delegates is almost their last vestige.

And I predict that it won't be too many years until this prerogative of the states disappears also ... in the name of nationalism. The meme today is for diversity in everything but thought and individual rights.  Sigh!