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The Super Tuesday primaries in the U.S. have left the Democratic party in a bind. Fourteen states held votes last Tuesday to determine who should be the party’s presidential nominee. Together they represent a third of the country’s electorate.

The results were inconclusive, with Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders in a virtual tie, although counting is still underway in several locations.

In passing, this entire pantomime, with each of the 50 states organizing its own separate vote count, is emblematic of the shambles that has overtaken that country’s electoral system. The obvious answer — one vote on one day, nationwide — is apparently too much to ask for.

In any case, what Super Tuesday produced is the real likelihood that none of the remaining candidates can achieve a clear majority. This means at the Democratic nominating convention in July, there may be a brokered outcome.

That would involve the party leadership adding 771 so-called “superdelegates” to the elected delegates in order to break the deadlock. In theory these fine folks are free to choose whichever candidate they prefer. But in practice they will vote for the candidate the leadership prefers.

You might think the sensible approach would be to hold a series of votes among the elected delegates, with the lowest candidate dropping out in each round until a winner emerges. But common sense is not a feature here.

What is a feature here is that these superdelegates will not vote for Bernie Sanders. The party is horrified at his far-left stance, which would cost at least $60 trillion US and double the federal budget over the coming decade. Sanders himself can’t say how he would pay for his platform, except to promise economy-wrecking tax hikes.

The same shenanigans happened during the 2016 convention, when super delegates voted for Hillary Clinton instead of Sanders. But while that infuriated Sanders’ supporters, it didn’t affect the outcome. Clinton would have won in any case.

However this time may be different. Biden holds a narrow lead, but his campaign has struggled.

At 77, the ex-vice-president is showing clear signs of cognitive decline. He told one rally he was running for the U.S. Senate. He told another that he couldn’t wait to be the first president to appoint a female African American senator. Senators are elected, not appointed.

He makes at least one of these gaffes at every appearance, and there are still eight months to go until the national election. There are serious concerns about what kind of shape he’ll be in by then.

Even so, the party leadership considers him more electable than Sanders. But if the convention is rigged to hand Biden the ticket, there will be outrage in Bernie’s camp.

And more to the point, there is the very real danger that appreciable numbers of his supporters will either sit out the election, or vote for a third party candidate. Either of those outcomes might well re-elect Donald Trump.

Theoretically, there is still time for the Democratic leadership to change the rules governing the convention and avoid just such an outcome. But no one has suggested doing so, and in practice the window might already have closed.

Now this mess could self-correct if Biden pulls himself together and wins enough of the remaining states to gain a clear majority. And he has received some help in recent days.

Of the four remaining candidates who dropped out over the past two weeks, three have endorsed Biden.

On the other hand, the fourth to call it quits — Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren — was competing with Sanders for the left-wing vote. Now that she’s gone, presumably at least some of that support will move into his camp.

In short, a brokered convention remains a strong possibility, and with it, a huge boost for Donald Trump.