Inside PBS Blog

That most opaque of electoral players -- the superdelegate -- is becoming a bit more transparent, thanks to the web.

Plugged in netizens have launched several sites of late that monitor the current crop of Democratic superdelegates--a group which many believe could be the deciding factor in the race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the party's presidential nomination. In an especially tight race, superdelegates--who under party rules can vote however they wish-- could throw the nomination to their preferred candidate, even if that candidate trails in the overall delegate count.

With this in mind, several folks have launched sites to track and monitor superdelegates, naming names and revealing which candidate they currently support.

Over at 2008 Democratic Convention Watch, they've compiled an exhaustive list of the 795 superdelegates who support Clinton or Obama. The site provides a Delegate Tracker tool that graphically depicts the current superdelegate total for each candidate.

It also sheds light on what may turn out to be the most influential group of all: Superdelegates who haven't yet committed to a candidate. The site lists hundreds of uncommitted superdelegates, including Democratic governors (Bill Richardson of New Mexico), Senators (Jim Webb of Virginia), and party leaders (California chair Art Torres).

Another site, the Superdelegate Transparency Project takes a slightly different approach.

The site is a collaborative wiki, or group collaboration tool. As with the uber-wiki Wikipedia, any user can propose additions or edits to the text. The wiki has compiled district-by-district results of the popular vote and pledged delegates, and then compared those results to how superdelegates are currently pledged. The project aims to gauge what effect superdelegates have on the nomination and to pressure the party to make the electoral process more transparent.

The Online NewsHour, a program seen on many PBS stations, also has a delegate tracker, and a good backgrounder explaining the whole baffling superdelegate structure.

In the end, all superdelegate trackers on the Web have the same goal in mind: to make the Democratic party's process more, well, democratic.