Intellectual Property Law

Have a Peaceful Memorial Day Week-end, Undeclared Superdelegates! Love, Arianna

By Ryan Singel, Kevin Poulsen, Sarah Lai Stirland, Kim Zetter, and David Kravets

Author and publisher Arianna Huffington called millions of her readers to action late this week, asking them to call and e-mail the 210 remaining undeclared superdelegates.

"So let's see if we can put the focus on those with the power to bring to an end this political equivalent of a 50s horror movie (The Campaign That Just Won't Die!): the superdelegates," she wrote in an editorial. "Hillary Clinton has more than earned the right to stay in the race until the bitter end. So it's up to the superdelegates to accelerate the bitter end."

Unlike a dead-tree newspaper piece, Huffington's column provided her readers with a jumping off point to execute her request. It links her readers to independent bloggers DemConWatch's frequently-updated tally of the undeclared superdelegates, as well as a crowd-sourced map of the super delegates, which was compiled by OffTheBus citizen-journalists.

All readers need to do is to click on their state, find a representative superdelegate from their geographic area, read their profile and find the relevant contact information. If you're on a political group e-mail list, the chances are that you may already have that information, since some Obama supporters have been circulating a list of superdelegate e-mail addresses around.

The superdelegate system was meant as an insurance policy against mob-decision rulemaking. But the emergence of the combination of a super-charged Democratic electorate, and the easy availability of collaborative software on the web is challenging the premise of the set-up.

See Also:

• Surprise! Student Superdelegates Endorse Obama via YouTube
• Obama Campaign Urges Online Audience To Lobby Superdelegates In ...
• Superdelegates Under the Spotlight
• Anonymous Blogging Superdelegate Is Former Richardson Field Director
• Clinton Resorts To PowerPoint
• Obama Uses YouTube To Lobby The Public After Losing Pennsylvania

Full post as published by Threat Level on May 24, 2008 (boomark / email).