California's primary looms large -- just like state officials had hoped [View all]

[RandySF]

SACRAMENTO — California’s Democratic primary suddenly matters.

Between the muddle of Iowa’s botched caucus, a weakened Joe Biden and Mike Bloomberg’s aggressive play for the 494 delegates at stake in the nation’s most populous state, California’s March 3 primary is taking on increased importance — just as California officials hoped it would more than a year ago, when they decided to move it up from June to March’s Super Tuesday.

And the voting has already begun: Even as New Hampshire gets its traditional place in the spotlight Tuesday, more than 15.5 million early ballots were mailed out to registered California voters last week, more than are up for grabs "in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada combined," California Secretary of State Alex Padilla notes.

The vast state’s reputation for a lengthy vote-counting process could prevent the quick emergence of a winner that night. But Padilla maintains there’s little danger that the confusion that happened in Iowa will take place in California, in part because the state’s elections are overseen by state administrators, not party officials. Plus, he argued, “the biggest issue in Iowa was the use of an app — and California does not use apps’’ for counting or casting ballots, or for reporting results — and the state “doesn’t allow the voting system to touch the internet” to prevent hacking.


https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/10/california-primary-bloomberg-sanders-2020-112958