Last week, once all of California's votes had been counted, it started to become clear to the media that the delegate count out of California that had been universally accepted and reported (Clinton 207-Obama 163) had shifted 8 delegates in Obama's favor to Clinton 203-Obama 167, but it actually only thanks to the efforts of a tenacious blogger that the media's delegate projections have begun to be updated at all.

David Dayen at calitics (aka dday) wrote as early as February 15th that CA's votes had shifted to such a degree as to change the delegate allocation. Then on March 4th Dayen heralded the 203-167 number and on March 6th began to realize that the media was completely ignoring this result.

Being that I kind of don't pay attention to the national media's delegate counts, I hadn't realized that they were all getting California so very, very wrong, and in fact are about 800,000 votes off from the official tally. Apparently many news organizations predict that Clinton will reap 207 delegates from California, and Obama 163. MSNBC has this. Real Clear Politics has this. CBS has this. The New York Times has this. CNN has it as 204-161 with 5 to be decided. They're all simply wrong, and I know math is hard and everything, but get out your calculators, people.

So Dayen began a campaign to enlighten the media, e-mailing The AP and following the progress as slowly but surely the delegate counters caught up, although the WaPo got a piece of Dayen's mind last Friday for writing up an incorrect delegate margin. To his credit, Keith covered the subject of the delayed delegate shift (more than 30 days after CA voted) on Countdown last night but since he asked NBC News's delegate count guy, he really didn't get quite a complete answer.

Keith Olbermann: And in California, there's a shift in the delegate count there more than a month after the vote during Super Tuesday?

Chuck Todd: California, because they have all this early voting and these mail-in ballots, they notoriously take a long time to count everything, it always take a while...And what happened was some vote came in and there were some places that Senator Clinton, that we had thought she would win with 63% in some congressional districts, turned out she only won with 62% and that meant an extra delegate for Obama, it happened in a couple of those districts, overall he netted 4 there.

That's not to say Dayen's efforts have gone entirely without notice in the MSM. Of all things, a Wall St. Journal.com blog picked the story up and gave Dayen credit where it was due.

David Dayen, who blogs at the site Calitics and serves on its editorial board, wrote last week that Sen. Clinton won 203 of the state’s 370 pledged delegates — and not the commonly reported total of 207. He relied on updated vote totals from the state, based on late counts of absentee and provisional ballots. Later, when he noticed that several major news organizations still were showing Sen. Clinton with 207 delegates, he wrote a follow-up post explaining his calculation and exhorting, “I know math is hard and everything, but get out your calculators, people.”

Now, it should be noted that the CA results won't be officially certified until Saturday, which may explain why the media was late to the party but in this primary when shifts in vote counts and delegate counts are a part of the ongoing "who's winning" narrative, perhaps it's not too much to ask that the media that is so fond of shaping that narrative should have the most updated numbers at all times. And the media outlets seem to agree. Check this out again from the wsj post:

On Monday, some news organizations were updating their totals. Earlier in the day, CNN showed Sen. Clinton up 204-161, with five delegates unallocated. A spokeswoman told me the site was waiting for California to certify its results before updating, but by this afternoon, the site’s California results page was in line with Mr. Dayen’s 203-167 margin. The New York Times’s page for California results shows the 207-163 result, but a page listing delegate totals for each state showed the 203-167 margin. NBC and CBS still showed the 207-163 margin. An inquiry to New York Times polling editor Janet Elder wasn’t returned. An NBC spokesman told me, “Apparently, there are discrepancies between the state count and the individual county tallies.” Kathy Frankovic, director of surveys for CBS News, told me, “delegate allocation is a work in progress.” (UPDATE: Ms. Frankovic told me later Monday that CBS would update its totals to reflect the 203-167 margin. “Thanks for alerting us to the problem,” she said.)

Which is really just a long way of saying "great work, Dave" and to point out what an invaluable resource the local blogs are in this unprecedented nomination process, not only to us in the blogosphere -- hopefully you all are reading them (see links below and to the left) as the primary contests move from state to state -- but now, hopefully, the MSM is learning the value in them as well so that, perhaps next time Keith needs an authority on local delegate counts, he might actually ask a blogger.

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As I wrote HERE, thousands of Decline To State voters (California's version of independents) who had voted in the Democratic primary in Los Angeles County on February 5th were in danger of having their votes not count since they failed to fill in a second bubble on their ballot indicating that they intended to vote in the Democratic primary even though they had already requested a Democratic ballot, a step that is required of DTS voters when voting in the primary. It was a classic case of a really poorly-designed ballot leading to the disenfranchisement of almost 100,000 voters but at least in this case the intent of the voters could be easily ascertained and, if allowed, be counted.

My friends at the Courage Campaign (for whom I do part time work) were the first to flag the potential problem and set into motion some pre-emptive measures as well as some legal challenges to make sure as many DTS voters' votes were ultimately counted.

The issue was ultimately taken up by the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors who heard arguments from Los Angeles Registrar of Voters, Dean Logan, who was resistant to counting the votes and Rick Jacobs of the Courage Campaign, who, armed with a petition signed by almost 33,000 supporters urging for the votes to be counted, made the case for letting the voices of thousands of Californians be heard.

You'll never guess who won.

Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan said Tuesday his office will try to count about 50,000 improperly marked nonpartisan ballots from this month's presidential primary election. [...]

Logan estimated about a quarter of the 190,000 ballots submitted by decline-to-state voters in Los Angeles County did not have both bubbles filled in. Those were among 1.8 million votes cast altogether in the county's Super Tuesday contest.

Logan told California Secretary of State Debra Bowen that he may be able to determine what some of those independent voters intended and count their ballots before he certifies the election results next week.

He said he can count ballots in precincts where there is no confusion between the two parties because independent voters asked exclusively for either Democratic or American Independent ballots.

This will no doubt result in a slight uptick in Barack Obama's California vote tally, although my friends at calitics tell me there's no way for it to impact the delegate count out of the state. But really, no matter who benefits, this is a huge win for the cause of counting every vote, a value all Democrats should share and a huge win for the power of thousands of names on a petition to make real world change.

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As I first wrote back on Super Tuesday, my friends at The Courage Campaign (for whom I do part time work) were the first to catch a potential speed bump for Los Angeles Decline To State voters ('DTS' -- our version of Independents) who chose to vote in the Feb. 5th Democratic primary.

Here, we have an Ink-A-Vote system where you mark your paper ballot with an ink marker and the ballot is then scanned through an optical reader right in front of you and you're sent on your way after confirmation that the vote was recorded. The problem for DTS voters is not only do they have to request a Democratic ballot, but then they must mark an extra bubble, which is placed above the names of the candidates, that confirms they're voting on a Dem ballot. Stupid, right? They already requested the ballot, that would seem to be confirmation enough, but alas, if it's not marked the scanner won't record it.

The Courage Campaign did an excellent job of educating voters and alerting the LA County registrar of voters in the days leading up to the primary, but ultimately their fears of disenfranchisement have unfortunately been borne out. As of today, a full 9 days after the primary, a total of 94,500 DTS voters' ballots have not been recorded because they failed to fill in the "Democratic" bubble on the Democratic ballot they'd already requested.

The Sacramento Bee rightly calls it a "major voting disaster" and through the continued pressure from The Courage Campaign, the LA County Board of Supervisors has entered the fray, passing a sort of half measure. From a Courage Campaign e-mail blast:

...the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has asked Logan to, as the San Francisco Chronicle reports, "tally the ballots of tens of thousands of nonpartisan voters... (and) change the confusing ballot in the nation's largest voting jurisdiction to prevent such a mishap from reoccurring." 

This is good news, but there's one big catch: The resolution passed by the Board of Supervisors merely asks Logan to expand his random sample -- it does not force him to hand-count every "Decline-to-State" ballot.

That's why, until every vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama is counted, we can not let up the pressure.

I agree whole-heartedly, which is why I signed their petition demanding that Logan count all of the votes. The petition already has more than 31,000 signers but the more that join, the more pressure we can exert on LA registrar of voters Dean Logan to actually give voice to those that voted on Feb. 5th.

The number of disenfranchised DTS voters represents almost half of all DTS votes state-wide. That is outrageous. No wonder they don't register with a party, this doesn't exactly give them confidence in our elections. We as Democrats should fight disenfranchisement wherever we see it and should do everything we can to encourage non-partisan voters to vote with us. So I hope you'll sign it today and help The Courage Campaign out so they can continue doing this important work.

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California (69% reporting)

Hillary Clinton 53 percent
Barack Obama 40 percent

There's been quite a bit of angst out there (and by "out there" I generally mean dailykos) over the fact that California was called so early for Clinton as some counties had yet to report, in fact hadn't even finished voting because of some irregularities. As expected, the margin is closing, with Obama reaching the 40% threshold, but it looks like Clinton's advantage, aided by a distinct early vote lead, is just too large to overcome.

David Dayen at calitics, who expects Clinton's lead to top out at about 10% or less, gives his take:

Maybe you CAN'T run a ground campaign with precinct captains in California.  Maybe it is too big.

Now, there's a long way to go, and I do expect it to tighten, but not a lot.  Clinton SMOKED Obama in the hard-to-reach areas of SoCal and the Central Valley.

In some key districts, however, we're seeing interesting stuff.  CA-01 is 9 points, CA-04 is 6, and CA-05 is 4.  All are trending to Obama late, and all are 5-delelgate districts.  2 out of 3 up there would be big.  CA-30 and CA-36, the Westside of LA and the South Bay, essentially, are 13 point leads for Clinton right now but it's very early and there are a lot of votes to go, and they too are trending Obama.  San Diego is starting to trend that way too but he's further behind.

Obama might bring this within 15-20 delegates, yet.

Indeed, that would be Obama's best case scenario; as Chuck Todd told us, the Obama team thinks they can keep Clinton's net gain from CA to around 18; Clinton thinks (hopes...) it's more like 30.

As for how Clinton managed such a solid win, the exit poll tells the story:

55% of voters were women
Clinton beat Obama among women 59% to 34%

29% of voters were Latino
Clinton beat Obama among Latinos 69% to 29%

It seemed at the time as though Obama had a solid California plan, not only precinct by precinct organizations and major labor boots on the ground, but also big time names coming to eat into Clinton's Latino edge (Kennedy) and her female edge (Oprah, Michelle, Caroline...Maria); it just didn't work. Will be curious to see the post-mortem on this one.

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California (17% reporting)

Hillary Clinton 55 percent
Barack Obama 33 percent

calitics is following the results as well.

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