An interesting first person anecdote from California on Facebook
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10153910165834219&id=631089218
Oh you guys, you GUYS! This just happened: I went to my neighborhood polling place to vote at 4:30pm. While I'm filling in my ballot it becomes clear from the chatter amongst the poll workers that they've almost run out of both Democratic ballots AND crossover ballots (which is what allows voters who registered with No Party Preference to cross over and vote Democrat in this primary...i.e. allows people who identify as party outliers to vote for Bernie as they are wont to do!) The significance of this is not lost on you, I'm sure. It's before 5pm, the after-work 5-8pm rush is about to begin, and they have RUN OUT OF BALLOTS! So I volunteer to go to the next nearest polling location and they are also COMPLETELY OUT of Democratic ballots. WTF!? The poll workers tell me they have had a massive turnout and SO many crossover voters that they've burned through all their ballots. This is not the fault of the volunteer poll workers, if sits squarely on the shoulders of the California Elections Office at the Secretary of State. They KNEW that voter turnout was going to be unusually high...it's all the media here has been talking about.
So. This story gets stranger yet. I'm fuming as I drive down Sunset, thinking that if this is happening in Silverlake, LA's gentrifying neighborhood of upwardly mobile and well-enfranchised intelligentsia, imagine the scenario in the deeply black and brown neighborhoods!! SO PISSED OFF that Hillary (bless her but she's an undebatable warhawk) is going to be installed this way. Between ballot shortages and the AP calling the race for Hillary yesterday on the eve of the election so the less motivated amongst us would just stay home. Grrrrr.
I get to a police motorcade 2 blocks down Sunset, and who is it but Bernie Sanders making a campaign stop at the evening Silverlake farmer's market! The crowd is small and I quickly park, walk over, stand in his handshake path, and tell him face to face that all the neighborhood polling locations appear to be out of any ballot by which anyone could have voted for him. His face, you guys, the knowing chagrine of a principled man fighting the good fight, in the right way, for the right reasons, against ALL odds and powerful special interests. Ugh. And yet he's still incredulous, as we all should be, that at 5pm in California on election Tuesday there's no way to cast a vote for the candidate of your choice. Provisional ballots? Pshaw. Like those get counted (or even if they do...remember Florida?)
Bernie is immediately on the ball, headed straight to the polls with the media in tow to get some exposure for this. I spend 5 minutes talking to his wife Jane and his aide Shane about exactly what I know, what I experienced, and within minutes I'm called by Bernie's voter protection team to make a statement. And that's how this story ends I guess. With the Associated Press calling the results the day BEFORE the election, and the State of California failing to enable their citizens to vote? Come ON. Hard to believe that this is the best we can come up with.
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Hmmmm ... Is the Democratic Party salvageable?
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