INQUISITR.COM / News & Politics

California Counts Millions Of Provisional And Mail-In Ballots, Counties Flip For Bernie And Nine More Superdelegates Drop Clinton

By Dawn Papple
Published on: 12:27 PST, Jun 12, 2016

Even though The New York Times declared that Hillary Clinton “secured enough delegates for the Democratic nomination,” and later issued a correction blaming the erroneous statement due to “an editing error,” Hillary Clinton did not actually earn enough delegates to be declared the nominee of the Democratic Party. In fact, contrary to the call by the Associated Press, Clinton also has not actually won California either. There are still millions of ballots that remain uncounted that will indeed be counted as the official canvass progresses, according to the California Secretary of State’s office. As the canvassing got underway, things started to to look up for Bernie Sanders’ supporters.

In Los Angeles County 275,972 Vote-By-Mail, 256,326 Provisional and 24,021 ballots of another form still had to be counted as of Friday afternoon. This totals over 556 thousand ballots in Los Angeles County alone that will be counted, where Clinton’s lead over Sanders is just over 164 thousand votes. Los Angeles County could still go either way.

The votes simply aren’t all accounted for just yet, but they will be.

The most recent report shows that in Glenn County, now that all of the late mail-in ballots and all of the provisional ballots are counted, Bernie Sanders’ voters managed to flip the county. On election night, Glenn County was called for Clinton, but the most recent report shows that with all but 24 ballots counted, Sanders won Glenn County. As the votes are still being counted in San Luis Obispo County, Bernie also surpassed Clinton there. He pulled ahead of Clinton in Santa Barbara County as well, where there are almost 21,000 ballots left to count, and on election night, there were only around 25,000 ballots cast for the Democratic primary. The ballots to be counted are almost the same number of Democratic ballots reported in the hours after the election day. The New York Times, as of Saturday night, had not updated their results in any of the counties where Bernie flipped the votes.

Berniecrats have not given up hope that Sanders will catch up and maybe even win in California before all the ballots are counted. The Secretary of State’s office in California explains.

“It typically takes weeks to process and count all of the ballots. Elections officials have approximately one month to complete their extensive tallying, auditing, and certification work (known as the ‘official canvass’).

“Most notably, voting by mail has increased significantly in recent years and many vote-by-mail ballots arrive on Election Day. In addition, vote-by-mail ballots postmarked on or before Election Day and received by county elections officials no later than 3 days after Election Day must be processed. In processing vote-by-mail ballots, elections officials must confirm each voter’s registration status, verify each voter’s signature on the vote-by-mail envelope, and ensure each person did not vote elsewhere in the same election before the ballot can be counted.

“Other ballots that are processed after Election Day include provisional ballots (processed similar to vote-by-mail ballots), and ballots that are damaged or cannot be machine-read and must be remade by elections officials.”

Now, while provisional ballots are generally used in the manner mentioned on the Secretary of State’s webpage, these ballots are playing a massive role in the hope that Bernie Sanders’ supporters are carrying that Sanders, who is separated by Hillary Clinton’s lead by only around 400 thousand votes in the entire state, could end up winning California after all.

After meeting with President Obama at the White house this week, Sanders reminded the press that the final numbers are still not in for California and that he looks forward to the remaining ballots making the race in California a much closer delegate split.

Those provisional ballots might not reflect the same proportion of votes in California this year that they normally do. According to multiple reports by poll workers, poll workers in districts in California were being told to give voters who were considered “No Party Preference” provisional ballots, rather than just giving them cross over ballots.

For weeks, on social media, Berniecrats worried that Bernie voters might be given provisional ballots at the polling places by poll workers, and that those provisional ballots would not count. As it turns out though, California’s thorough official canvassing procedure includes counting all provisional ballots.

Friday was the last day that the mail-in ballots had to be received by in order to count in the final tally. They had to be postmarked by election day. As the official canvassing started, Clinton’s lead began to shrink slightly. There are still 2.4 million more ballots to go through before California’s Democratic primary results are known, including over 718 thousand provisional ballots and Clinton up just 475 thousand votes in California.

Clinton is still ahead in delegates and super delegates, but nine more superdelegates are now showing in the most current update from The Green Papers as having dropped Hillary Clinton. She now as 545 superdelegates who say they will most likely vote for her at the convention in July. The New York Times still shows 577.

[Image adapted from California Secretary Of State]

Share this article: California Counts Millions Of Provisional And Mail-In Ballots, Counties Flip For Bernie And Nine More Superdelegates Drop Clinton
hillary clinton bernie sanders
More from Inquisitr