Delegate
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A delegate is a person who has been "delegated" to do a particular job. In delegating a job to someone, authority is passed over to that person to undertake the role in the way they see fit. A delegate is not, therefore, beholden to refer back at every turn, asking for further instructions. Someone who is obliged to do that would more properly be termed a "representative". In some political systems, people are elected as representatives, and are thereafter bombarded with specific requests or instructions to act in a particular way.
In voting for national and international Bahá'í institutions, the choice of the term delegate shows that the person/people that the Bahá'ís vote for is/are guided by their own conscience, and are not slaves to the capricious whims of their electorate, whose opinions they cannot, anyway, obtain in quick order. So it is that the Baha'is in a particular area vote at their Unit Convention for a delegate or delegates who will go to the National Convention and will feel free to act according to their conscience and as guided by God. The Bahá'í who is not a delegate has every right to approach his or her delegate and suggest matters to be brought up at the national Convention, but the delegate is in no way obliged to raise these ideas.
For each country or territory, the Universal House of Justice decides how many delegates there should be at the national Convention, and the numbers chosen seem to have symbolic significance. If the national community is very small in number, there may be 9 delegates. The next step up is 19. A somewhat larger community, of perhaps a few thousand Bahá'ís, may have 95 delegates (95 = 19x5). The United States of America has approximately 475 delegates. If this figure is correct, it would again be a multiple of 19.
