(I wonder what we’ll be dealing with the rest of the week. bump. – promoted by Lucas O’Connor)

So I went to my polling place at an off-hour to see if turnout was decent (it was pretty average, in my view).  It was a new location for me, in a little art gallery featuring an exhibit called “Patriot Acts” (yes, a politically themed art installation in a polling place.  Ah, the People’s Republic of Santa Monica).  I had no problem getting my ballot and heading to the booth.  The guy behind me was a DTS voter who had no idea that Republicans didn’t allow them to vote in the primary.  “I wouldn’t vote for the Republicans anyway,” he yelled as he took a Democratic ballot.  But nobody told him to make sure to fill out that Democratic oval to re-assert that he, as a nonpartisan voter, requested a Democratic ballot (as if taking the ballot in the first place wasn’t enough of a clue).  So I told him.

My neighbor was headed to the polls; she’s also a DTS voter.  I told her to make sure to fill out that Democratic oval.  She said she kind of heard something about that but wasn’t sure.

I’ve received more than a couple emails from DTS voters thanking me for telling them about the issue, or saying that they didn’t fill out the bubble, asking me whether or not their votes will be counted.

This is a NIGHTMARE.  An absolute nightmare.  This has been in place since 2002, and somehow the evidence from 2004, when so few DTS voters participated in the Democratic primary in LA County, wasn’t enough to dummy-proof the system.  Thousands upon thousands of voters are going to be disenfranchised today.  I can’t reach them all; neither can the CDP.  The Secretary of State must demand that all those DTS ballots are impounded, the machines recalibrated to eliminate this problem, and all votes reread through the feeder.  In a race so close, we cannot have this crisis of confidence.

UPDATE: I’m on a conference call with the Obama campaign right now and they’re talking about this very issue.  “There is great concern” in Los Angeles County, and “the pollworkers are confused” about this as well, according to the lawyer on the phone now (I would use the word “ignorant” and not confused).  “We’re hoping the Secretary of State and the County Registrar will rectify this situation” but they don’t sound particularly hopeful.

DTS voters are also being denied ballots in selected counties, according to the campaign.

Carla Marinucci is wondering why this wasn’t challenged previously.  This has been in place in LA County in multiple election cycles, and knowing that DTS voters would show up in record numbers, I agree that it should have been caught earlier.  My point is that the Secretary of State’s office or the county registrar should have been the ones to catch it.  The lawyer just said “We hope that they will adopt procedures to make sure these ballots are counted,” and if they aren’t adopted, he raised the option of legal challenges.

These ballots almost certainly won’t be counted tonight, and keep that in mind when you start seeing the results roll in.

They’re hoping that the media gets this out.  I’m trying.

UPDATE II: From Ezra Klein:

From the inbox: This is really weird. From the Clinton campaign:

4:25 PM EST HILLARY WIRE UPDATE…

* False reports about voting problems in LA are being drudged up

– Everything is going smoothly in LA.

What a revolting statement (if true).

Update (Lucas): LA City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo has a statement out now.

“I urge the Secretary of State and County Registrar to do everything within their power to ensure that every vote is counted, and to carefully weigh voter intent against this confusing Los Angeles County ballot design.

(Brian touched on the quirks of the primary process here; I ran the numbers.)

We hear a lot about the back and forth of the Democratic primary in California.  We hear about various campaign rallies, some of it useful and interesting.  Heck, I’ve written about them myself.  What I see less about is the actual nuts and bolts of the California election, and what its quirks will mean for the delegate counts for Obama or Clinton.  The AP came close the other day.

The Democratic rules provide for delegates to be awarded proportionately on the basis of the popular vote. It wasn’t always that way, but a change designed to weaken the control of party bosses was ushered in after the riotous Vietnam War-era 1968 convention […]

In a race with two equally matched rivals – Obama and Clinton are both running well-funded national campaigns – that tends to leave the winner of the popular vote with only a narrow delegate advantage over a loser who runs a strong race.

Multiply that across dozens of congressional districts – 53 in California – and predicting the winner of the delegate struggle is a virtual impossibility.

Then it gets harder.

For the Democrats, in a congressional district with three delegates, two go to the popular vote winner, and the loser gets the third as long as they win 15 percent of the popular vote.

But in a congressional district with four delegates, the winner and loser in a two-way race are likely to divide the spoils evenly. The winner must receive nearly 63 percent of the vote to get a 3-1 split in delegates, and 85 percent of the vote to win all four.

This is generally very true.  But the author neglects to mention that there are only two Congressional districts in California which offer 3 delegates.  The real prizes are the five-delegate districts, because the majority of the districts offer even-numbered delegates which almost guarantee an equal distribution.  And because of the particular breakdown of delegate allocation, Barack Obama actually has a built-in advantage in winning a majority of the delegates, regardless of the popular vote.

Here’s the list of delegate allocation in California.  As you can see, there are 370 pledged delegates up for grabs, and 241 of them will be pledged at the district level.  The other 129 will be allocated to candidates based on their share of the statewide vote.  Given what we know about the closeness of the race in California, I simply can’t see much more than a 10-point spread in that allocation.  So the other 241 from the district races will end up being a significant factor.

There are 26 districts which allocate four delegates, all of which are almost certain to split evenly among Clinton and Obama. Significantly, these include some of the most heavily Latino districts in the state, including CA-21 (Nunes), CA-31 (Becerra), CA-32 (Solis), CA-34 (Roybal-Allard), CA-38 (Napolitano), CA-39 (Linda Sanchez) and CA-43 (Baca).  Clinton’s perceived advantage among Latinos is neutralized by the high bar needed to cross to gather extra delegates in these districts.  The likely scenario is an even 52-52 split.

There are 6 districts which allocate 6 delegates, where it is still likely to be an even scenario, but where a strong showing could give a 4-2 split (I think a candidate would need close to 60% of the vote for that to happen).  These districts, the most Democratic in the state (the allocation is based on Democratic turnout in primaries), are CA-06 (Woolsey), CA-08 (Pelosi), CA-09 (Lee), CA-12 (Lantos), CA-14 (Eshoo) and CA-30 (Waxman).  As these are districts populated with liberals, and given that some of them are high-income (06, 08, 12, 30), they seem to trend toward Obama.  I think CA-09, Barbara Lee’s district serving heavily African-American Oakland as well as some other East Bay cities, offers the best chance for a 4-2 split.  Let’s say that Obama gets one of these.  The number is now 71-69 Obama.

As I said, there are two districts with 3 delegates: CA-20 (Costa) in the Central Valley, and CA-47 (Loretta Sanchez) in Orange County. (As an aside, this means that these two districts turn Democrats out to primaries at the lowest rates.  And they both have Democratic Congressmen.  Way to go, Bush Dogs!)  I project that CA-47 will go to Clinton, and think that CA-20 is up for grabs.  There are a decent amount of campesinos in that area, but rural districts in Nevada went strongly for Obama.  So let’s hold off on that for now.  The number is now 72-71 Obama, with 3 delegates outstanding.

Now we come to the real electoral prize: the 19 districts which offer 5 delegates.  There are quite a few advantages for Obama in these districts.  First, all three heavily African-American districts in Southern California are in this group: CA-33 (Watson), CA-35 (Waters) and CA-37 (Richardson).  Obama should be able to attract a majority here.  Then there are two districts in the far north of the state: CA-01 (Thompson) and CA-04 (Doolittle).  Based on how their Nevada neighbors voted, I project them to Obama.  Third, there are three districts in the Bay Area that fall into this category, and in the most recent Field Poll, Obama was stronger in the Bay Area than Southern California.  I expect him to take CA-07 (George Miller) and CA-13 (Stark), but lose CA-10 (Tauscher) because that’s a more suburban district.  That’s so far a 7-1 split for Obama.

Clinton’s strength is in the suburbs and in Southern California, as well as among Latinos.  But very few of those districts fall into this grouping.  There are three in the San Fernando Valley: CA-27 (Sherman), CA-28 (Berman) and CA-29 (Schiff).  But Adam Schiff has strongly endorsed Obama, and his Pasadena district is more liberal and upscale.  I see a 2-1 split for Clinton here.  NONE of the Orange County districts offer 5 delegates.

Going into the wild cards, we have 8 districts for Obama and 3 for Clinton.  The rest include CA-05 (Matsui) in the Sacramento area, CA-15 (Honda) in the San Jose area, CA-17 (Farr) in Monterey, CA-23 (Capps) in Santa Barbara, CA-36 (Harman) in the South Bay of Los Angeles, CA-50 (Bilbray) in the San Diego suburbs, and CA-53 (Davis) in San Diego.  If I were to guess, I’d say that CA-23 and CA-36 have some built-in advantages for Obama (upscale, highly educated, “wine track” liberal), making it an 11 to 3 split, with 5 outstanding.

So, before the polls close, we can reasonably project a 111-102 split for Obama, with 28 delegates up for grabs, as well as the 129 that will go proportionally to the winner.  If you split the rest of the district-level delegates evenly, I think you end up with anywhere from a 7 to 12 delegate advantage that Clinton would have to make up in the popular vote.  At the lowest level she would need 53% of the vote or a 6 percentage-point victory to make this up; at the highest level, 55-56% of the vote or a 10 to 12-point victory.  Given the polling recently, and the fact that there has been an unusually slow rate of return of absentee ballots until after the South Carolina primary, I think the final result is likely to be narrower.  And so, despite the possibility of Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote in the Golden State, I’m not sure she’s favored to win the majority of delegates, given the reality of the allocation.

Now, the question becomes, how will this be spun?  Will the media only report on the popular vote, or will they look at the delegate counts?  Probably the former; it’s simply easier for the format of broadcast news.  But they’d be missing out on an important story, that this is a race for delegates, and the candidate who takes advantage of the system is the most likely to reap the benefits.

Every so often, you go to one of these events and see something special.  I’m not talking about Maria Shriver, yet.

One of the first speakers was a woman named Susan, a 93 year-old Korean-American and veteran of the Navy in World War II.  She talked about going to basic training in the deep South and seeing segregation up close for the first time.  “We’ve come a long way,” she said, and in an auditorium filled with people of all races and ethnicities, uniting around one candidate, it rang true.

Oh yeah, there was this too:

more on the flip…

Being on the campus of UCLA, the demographic was very young.  It was the first time I’ve seen a crowd do “the wave’ at a political event.  There were homemade signs and banners everywhere, and a bunch of iconic-looking posters, designed by Shepard Fairey, with a roto-scoped drawing of Obama and the word “Hope.” (We snagged one.)

After the pre-program, which featured Susan as well as some California legislative leaders (the two highest-ranking woman in the California Legislature, Asm. Majority Leader Karen Bass and Sen. Majority Leader Gloria Romero, are supporting Obama), Buffy Wicks, a field coordinator with the California campaign, took the stage.  They instituted an “adopt-a-precinct program” at the event.  Each attendee was given a call script and a sheet with a couple dozen names from the Voter Activation Network (VAN) list, which has been developed over the past couple years as a pretty well-scrubbed voter contact database.  I’m not sure that this will result in a ton of calls, and certainly the campaign is relying on other sources than people who showed up to a rally.  But it gives the people that attended a sense of investment in the campaign, a chance to do more than show up, to really participate in their democracy.  And that’s really an invaluable sense of empowerment.

After that, the JumboTron at Pauley Pavillion played the “Yes We Can” song that has been generating such buzz online (incidentally, Scarlet Johansson is the “Dan Aykroyd in We Are The World” of that song).  And then, out came LA labor leader and campaign co-chair Maria Elena Durazo to introduce Caroline Kennedy.  Caroline is not entirely comfortable in this format, but she held some authority as she addressed the crowd.  She said that she is not normally involved in politics, but this year is different, and she saw in Obama someone that inspired her the way others tell her that her dad inspired them.

Oprah Winfrey was next, with a short but powerful speech that kind of seemed to be more about answering her own critics than talking about Sen. Obama.  Oprah can definitely work a crowd, and she got them into a frenzy by speaking about how this campaign on the Democratic side is a declaration of victory for women’s and civil rights.  “I hear a lot of people say ‘How could you, Oprah, you’re a traitor to your gender.’  But I’m a free woman, and I’m following my own truth.”  She recycled a Toni Morrison quote about how Obama has a creative imagination (that’s certainly what you see in the “Yes We Can” song, which he didn’t create, but inspired) and wisdom, in her view a gift that can’t be taught or borne from experience.

Oprah brought out who we thought was the final speaker, and at Michelle Obama’s side, unexpectedly, was Stevie Wonder.  He connected the opportunity of Obama to the realizing of seeing an MLK holiday and the end of apartheid in South Africa.  I’d say it was over the top, but it was Stevie Frackin’ Wonder.  He ended with a little musical number.

I had never seen Michelle Obama speak before.  She has learned well for her experience in this campaign.  Talking without notes, she told her own story, her husband’s, and the story of America, with the struggles of the working classes at the forefront.  It was almost a speech John Edwards could have given, with a good deal of populism and concern for the working man.  She talked about how the nation is too isolated, too cynical, too guided by a fear which clouds our judgment and cuts us off from each other.  “I am what an investment in public education looks like,” she said as she discussed life on the South Side of Chicago, growing up with a father with a disability who nevertheless provided for his family in an era when a city worker’s salary could do that much.  She really kind of hearkened back to a simpler time in America, before the middle class squeeze, when regular folks didn’t get the shaft.  We have, Michelle said, evoking her husband’s speech in an Atlanta church the day before the King holiday, an empathy deficit, a lack of fulfilling our mutual obligation to one another.  “Our souls are broken in this nation.”

It was striking, bold, almost angry at what has happened “through Democratic and Republican administrations” over the last few decades.  I didn’t expect a speech so focused on our forgotten commitments to family and community, on the needs of all of us to lift each other up, on the repeated phrase “to whom much is given, much is expected.”  Her recitation of Barack’s resume was familiar, but it was the presentation, the stridency in the voice.  “Sometimes we don’t know what the truth looks like because we haven’t seen it in so long… Barack will NEVER allow you to go back to your lives.”

Look, I agree.  We should be angry about what has been done to our country.  We should demand more of our leaders and ourselves.  We should have a persistent voice in our ears telling us that we can accomplish our goals, we can live out our dreams, that we “are better than anyone’s limited expectations.”

Then there was the bit of news made at this event, about a Mrs. Shriver who showed up at the end.  I pasted the video above, so you can see it for yourself.  I consider it very significant.  It will be an above-the-fold story for two days in California, given all the drama of a family split, the mystique of the Kennedys, etc.  Moreover, Democrats generally like the first family for whatever reason, and so it has a real-world residual effect.  But really, Shriver’s speech folded nicely into the Obama message, this idea that we are the ones we have been waiting for, that change begins with you, as it says on Obama’s Super Bowl ad.

Obviously there have been significant gains for Obama in the Golden State over the past week.  Based on what I had seen from the delegate allocation (particularly that practically every Congressional district with a heavy Latino population offers 4 delegates, which means Obama will split those while winning extra delegates elsewhere), I was ready to predict that Obama would lose the popular vote while taking the majority of the delegates.  Now, I’m almost ready to believe the words of one supporter, moments after Shriver took the stage.

“We just took California.  We just took California.”

Here are some pics: