California’s lengthy vote count stokes theories that Sanders actually won the primary

It's true that the ballots counted since Election Day have split more evenly between Sanders and Clinton than the early vote or Election Day ballots. When the networks called the race, 3,442,623 votes had been cast for either candidate, with Clinton leading by 438,537 votes. As of the last ballot update Wednesday morning, 4,693,010 total votes had been cast. Clinton's lead was at 445,366 votes.

But the water-torture nature of the count, which processes as few as 25,000 new ballots a day, has dangled out hope for Sanders supporters. On election day, Sanders won just two congressional districts and lost counties that his campaign thought were favorable, such as Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Yolo (home of the University of California at Davis).

Sanders has since won those counties and picked up five more congressional districts, including the 13th District, which covers the city of Berkeley and had shocked reporters on election day by apparently going for Clinton.... Richard Charnin has argued that "Sanders had 75 percent of the estimated 20 percent of voters who were disenfranchised," and that Sanders's weaker performance in states with electronic ballots suggested that votes had been stolen.

Few Sanders supporters endorse that theory, but in California, many are still lobbying the secretary of state (a Democrat) to count every provisional ballot, on the theory that they might otherwise be tossed. (Every election, thousands of ballots are spoiled for various reasons.) On the Bernie or Bust Facebook group's page Wednesday, an activist named Anthony Rodriguez reported that a direct action at a Los Angeles registrar's office had succeeded.