Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Tom Perez on Tuesday said that superdelegates have “never decided who won the nomination,” days after the DNC voted to limit the role of superdelegates in choosing the party’s presidential nominee.
The DNC head added that “while superdelegates haven’t decided who won the nomination, they’ve affected peoples’ sense of” fairness.
The DNC voted overwhelmingly on Saturday to limit the role of superdelegates — unpledged delegates to the DNC who choose for themselves for whom they vote — and not allow them to vote during the first ballot of the nominating process.
{mosads}Perez says superdelegates have not determined the nominee before, but the DNC needs to be “fair in fact and fair in perception.”
“Superdelegates have been in place since 1984,” Perez said on CNN’s “New Day.” “They’ve never decided who won the nomination.”
“[Former Democratic presidential nominee] Hillary Clinton won the nomination in 2016 because she got more votes than her opponents,” he said. “Same thing with [former President] Barack Obama in 2008. The fact of the matter is, while superdelegates haven’t decided who won the nomination, they’ve affected peoples’ sense of the fairness of the process.”
“What our goal is is to make sure the process is fair to everyone,” Perez added. “Fair in fact and fair in perception.”
A group of DNC members, led in part by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), have pushed for the reform, claiming the set-up of the superdelegates system benefitted the party’s elite.
Sanders and his supporters have claimed that superdelegates gave Clinton an unfair advantage over the Vermont senator in the race for the party’s 2016 presidential nomination.
“We may have double-digit candidates in 2020 and all but one are going to be disappointed,” Perez said. “When people feel like their candidate got a fair shake and the process was fair, then they’re excited at the end of the process. We come out of that primary with wind at our back and we bring that wind into victory in November.”