wish and are not bound to vote for any particular candidate. They have one vote. Many feel that they have earned that vote because they are established elected officials, sent to office by the voters. Their role only really matters when there is a close distribution of votes for candidates at the convention or when there are three candidates and no majority. In those cases, super delegates can affect the election. They exist to prevent "smoke-filled" room negotiations when there are multiple candidates and to arrive at the necessary majority when one cannot be developed through normal processes. Most often, they're just voting delegates.

Conventions now are different than they were back in the 50s and 60s. That's partly because of these super delegates. Some people would like to go back to the old walking caucus free-for-all conventions. Myself, I'm not fond of the old convention system. I think it led to some pretty questionable decisions, really. 1968 was a good example. That year could have been done better and saved us from Richard Madman Nixon. Go read a history of that convention. It was a cluster-intercourse of a convention.