Published: February 01, 2008 11:41 pm            

Just vote

I was all set to write a column about the upcoming primary on Tuesday and attempt to explain just how delegates are committed to a particular candidate.

Remember those Excedrin commercials where a persnickety situation was labeled as “Excedrin Headache Number...?”

Well, trying to figure out how a candidate gets certain delegates doled out based on the percentage of votes they get in a primary is Excedrin Headache Number 431 million.

After conducting numerous web site searches on the subject I've decided America's Founding Fathers had it all wrong. Give us a king so we don't have mess with this every four years.

Of course, I'm kidding. American democracy is much like baseball. It's easy for the casual bystander to understand but also very intricate when you start breaking down the game itself.

For instance, in one recent primary Hillary Clinton took the popular vote in the state but Barack Obama received more delegates.

How eerily Al Goreish is that?

Basically, here's the breakdown for each political party. Get the aspirin bottles ready.

Oklahoma will have 41 delegates at the Republican National Convention. Three delegates will be pledged to vote for the top candidate in each congressional district.

Twenty-three delegates will be pledged to vote for the top candidate statewide. The remaining three delegates are the state chairman, the national committeeman, and the national committeewoman, who go to the convention free to vote, as they will.

There will be 47 Oklahoma delegates at the Democratic National Convention. The six Oklahoma members of the DNC, U. S. Rep. Dan Boren, and Gov. Brad Henry will go as unpledged delegates. A ninth unpledged delegate will be elected at the state convention.

Five delegates from each congressional district will be allocated proportionately to candidates who receive more than 15 percent of the vote. The same formula will be used to allocate 13 delegates according to the statewide result.

I'm sure political pundits from both parties understand all of this, but to the average voter it might seem overwhelming.

I kept expecting to see a footnote to the above calculations that might sound something like this:

“However, for a candidate receiving less than 15 percent of the vote, a delegate will be allocated to the candidate based on the candidate's height, weight and the number of hands he or she shaked during the campaign prior to the primary in question.

“A candidate receiving more than 15 percent of the votes in a congressional district, but less than 37 percent of the ballots cast, may be assigned one delegate per capita.”

My head hurts just trying to figure that out. Fortunately, there was no such footnote.

It'd be much easier if the party officials just put it plain and simple by stating the obvious, “We're going to pick whomever we want to pick. So there!”

Now, forget everything you've just read above and go vote this Tuesday for the candidate you think would be the best choice for your party.

After all, it's far more important to just vote than to figure out how your vote is going to be counted.

        

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