Tulsi Gabbard, a prominent surrogate for Bernie Sanders, is among those lobbying for reform of the superdelegate system. | Getty Liberals gear up for DNC superdelegate fight

More than a dozen prominent progressive organizations, Democratic officeholders, and top liberal operatives are demanding that the Democratic National Committee's Rules Committee remake the superdelegate system when the panel meets just before the convention in Philadelphia at the end of the month.

The argument, made in a letter to the DNC, convention delegates, and the DNC's Platform Rules Committee, is that the superdelegate process as it stands "undermines representative democracy and means that the electorate is not necessarily decisive in determining who will be the Democratic nominees for president and vice president."


"We urge members of the Rules Committee to introduce, demand a vote on, and support language to such an effect — and if needed, issue a minority report in support of such measures to be taken to the floor of the convention. We encourage all delegates who believe that the will of the electorate should reign supreme to support these efforts," reads the letter, which was first obtained by POLITICO. It is signed by liberal advocacy groups MoveOn.org, Democracy for America, and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, as well as the center-left NDN think tank, among others.

The signers want to keep the total number of delegates the same but convert the existing superdelegates to regular delegates.

"In light of the above considerations, we propose that, moving forward, the DNC retain at least the current total number of delegates, inclusive of superdelegates — 4,770 — for future national conventions, but allot all of them to states, territories, and Democrats abroad through the rubric that governs pledged delegate allotments, and require that all of them be selected through popular primary and/or caucus processes," the letter reads.

The letter was also signed by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, former Cook County Commissioner Chuy Garcia, and former Howard Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi. Gabbard and Garcia were both prominent surrogates for Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has strongly advocated overhauling the superdelegate system.

"We’ve seen a historic number of new voters and activists join our political process in the past year, many of whom are rightly upset at how rigged the political system can seem at times," Gabbard (D-Hawaii) said in a statement. "If we want to strengthen our democracy and our party, we must end the super delegate process.”

The letter marks yet another sign that liberals and former Sanders supporters remain keen on pushing the party to follow through on a key plank of the Sanders campaign. Sanders, who lagged far behind Clinton in superdelegates during the primary, wrote in an email to supporters Tuesday that he plans to still focus on moving the party to the left through the Rules Committee deliberations at the convention.

"We still have a tremendous amount of work left to do in the Democratic Rules Committee that will be meeting in the coming weeks," Sanders wrote in the email. "We have to enact the kinds of reforms to the Democratic Party and to the electoral process that will provide us the tools to elect progressive candidates, to allow new voices and new energy into the Party, and to break up the excessive power that the economic and political elites in the Party currently have. As with our fights on the platform committee, that will only be possible if we stand together."

The Rules Committee is set to hold a meeting ahead of the convention on July 23.