More than anyone should know about the primaries

LIMA — Hillary Clinton’s moving the goalposts and Barack Obama’s defending his lead while John McCain’s already won his playoff game. The presidential race has moved on from Ohio, but now that the dust has settled, do you know what happened, really?Below, we give you answers to questions you were afraid to ask or didn’t know you needed to know about primary delegate math, superdelegates’ super powers and why Puerto Rico is more important than a real state.What’s left of this primary season? (Or, where is the circus in town next?) As the pundits have pointed out, Clinton is running out of field; most of the country has cast votes already.Wyoming held its Democratic primary Saturday. Mississippi is Tuesday and then it’s 42 days of political knife fighting on the streets of Philadelphia until Pennsylvania’s primary April 22. After that Indiana, North Carolina, Nebraska, West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico and South Dakota and some U.S. territories remain, for a total of between 600 and 700 delegates.When do candidates sleep? Just after the new year, Obama said jokingly on the stump he received “eight hours of sleep” for Christmas, according to the International Herald Tribune.Candidates don’t sleep much, as evidenced by their grueling schedules and occasional misspeaking. Mike Huckabee was down to about four hours a night, according to the Tribune, this winter.You know how you function after little sleep. Try on a recent schedule of John Edwards: ending at midnight and starting his next day at 2:15 a.m.That kind of schedule accounts for candidates saying things such as Mitt Romney’s utterance: “I won’t remember Iowans.” (He meant he would “never forget” Iowans.)Who gets to be a superdelegate? Is there a cape with the job? No cape. However, many wish they had Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak to hide from courting candidates and pushy press.Only Democrats have superdelegates, as Mike Huckabee learned recently on “Saturday Night Live.” The party created them after extreme pendulum swinging between a violent, disastrous 1968 convention in Chicago in which grassroots members felt left out of the process and the 1972 convention in which people such as then-Ohio Gov. John Gilligan didn’t get seated. The party created them to make sure high-ranking party and elected officials always had a seat at the nominating table.The first time superdelegates played a role in the nomination, they helped then-Vice President Walter Mondale withstand a challenge from Sen. Gary Hart in 1984.“I hope nothing,” is what superdelegate Enid Goubeaux said when asked what her job will be this year. Goubeaux, former chair of the Darke County Democratic Party, is now a member of the Democratic National Committee.Resolutely uncommitted to a candidate, Goubeaux doesn’t want the nomination decision in superdelegates’ hands. She wants a unified party, a victory in November, and for CNN to stop calling.Why do the rules differ between parties and among states? Elections, even for federal office, in this country are “bottom up” rather than “top down.”Dating back to the Constitution, elections have always been left up to the states. The first time the federal government inserted itself into the administration of elections didn’t come until the Voting Rights Act of 1965, said Keith Cunningham, Allen County elections board director. Parties set their own rules and in Ohio are recognized only when they meet certain thresholds, such as receiving a certain percentage of votes.Why do some states have caucuses, others primaries and others both? See above. States and parties can do what they want. Caucuses have history rooted in early voting, such as a show of hands, Cunningham said.In Iowa, it’s just what those wacky Iowans do. The DesMoines Register, in its “Frequently Asked Questions” section about the Iowa Caucus, says Iowa sticks with its method so as not to upset the cranky New Hampshire folks: “In the mid-1980s, Iowa political leaders cut a deal with New Hampshire’s political leaders: New Hampshire gets the first primary, Iowa gets the first caucus. For Iowa to change the caucuses to a primary would be a violation of that agreement and trigger a feud with New Hampshire.”Calculus, algebra, delegates: How does a candidate actually win? In 2000, the country got an Electoral College education; this year we’re seeing how the sausage is made at the nominating level. Popular vote only allocates delegates.For example, the Republican National Committee gives Ohio 88 delegates and the state party has a “winner-take-all” system in which the candidate who wins congressional districts and statewide is allocated all of the corresponding delegates.The Democratic National Committee gives Ohio 141 delegates in a “proportional” system, created to increase the input of significant minority factions in the party. District delegates are apportioned among top votegetters in each congressional district and at-large delegates are apportioned among top votegetters statewide by the percentage of the vote received above a certain threshold, 15 percent.The formulas create scenarios like this: Puerto Rico, not a state, has 55 delegates, more than, say, Colorado, Louisiana or Oklahoma.To win the Democratic nomination, a candidate needs 2,025 delegates. Clinton has 1,463 delegates, behind Obama who has 1,571, according to projections from The Associated Press. The Republican candidate needs 1,191 to win the nomination and McCain already has 1,289, according to the AP.Got that? Now go practice some rocket science. Congratulations! You’re now a Democrat! (Or, how do Ohio voters cast ballots in partisan primaries and what does that mean for party affiliation?) Ohio has what is called a “modified” primary, in which a voter may cast a ballot in a Democratic or Republican primary but voting in a particular primary automatically registers that voter with that party. Even-year primary voting is the only way to align with a party, Cunningham said.So, any conservatives who acted on Rush Limbaugh’s prodding and voted in the Democratic primary for Clinton now will have a “D” behind their names for two years. They can try to ignore it, but they can’t shake it. The media told me this would be all settled by now. Does it always take this long for a party to pick a candidate? No, but it can. Hillary Clinton reminds us that her husband didn’t wrap up the nomination until June 1992.With the Democratic race so close, there’s talk of a “brokered” convention, which hasn’t happened in any party since 1952 when Adlai Stevenson won the Democratic nomination. Those superdelegates, with their super voting powers, were put in place partly to avoid a brokered convention, according to a Joanna Klonsky article in the Washington Post.  Bonus questions:What do the candidates say about themselves on MySpace? This one may make us yearn for the good ole’ days when former President Clinton played his saxophone on “Arsenio Hall” to seem hip. Because of MySpace.com, we now know:• McCain is a Virgo whose favorite movie is “Viva Zapata!” the 1952 Oscar-winning story of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata.• Obama’s “orientation” is straight.• Clinton’s last music purchase was the new Carly Simon album.How many times did Clinton say “ready” in her Columbus speech Tuesday night? Eleven, the third most uttered word. First was “Ohio” at 13 and second was “people” at 12.How many different stickers can you buy on Obama’s Web site? Twenty-four, including “Asian Americans Pacific Islanders for Obama,” and an “Obama ’08” bumper sticker in Hebrew.True or false: You can buy a “Kiss me I’m Irish and voting for McCain” shirt on the Republican nominee’s Web site. False, mostly. There is a nice assortment of St. Patrick’s Day merchandise for sale there.