There's another, new way NPP voters may obtain a presidential ballot: re-register from NPP to Democrat right at the polling station on election day and thereby get a presidential ballot.
However, this same day registration option is little known, not advertised by the state -- and I found not a single sign at the four voting centers I visited that mentioned the new option.
What's the impact of this labyrinthine ballot dance? A lot, according to the statistician Paul Mitchell, vice president of Political Data Inc, a private firm employed by both the Republican and Democratic parties.
Mitchell recently completed a poll of 700 independent voters and found that while 61% wanted to vote in the Democratic primary, nearly half (45%) were clueless about how to get a Democratic ballot. Another third of NPP voters believed that they could not exchange their no-candidate ballots -- though the law says they may.
This year, hundreds of thousands of these voters had already mailed back the NPP ballot without presidential candidates because, according to Mitchell's polling, they assumed they had no ability to exchange it.
Mitchell's pollsters also asked 300 NPP voters whom they'd vote for if they had obtained the correct ballot. About 26% preferred Sanders, which translates to 553,000 potential lost votes, by Mitchell's estimates. Mike Bloomberg, meanwhile, could come up 383,000 votes short.
The Democratic National Committee chiefs, who created and uphold the rules, show little sympathy for the millions of non-Democrats who want to exercise their right to vote in their primary but refuse to register as Democrats.
And that could be because they will continue to back only establishment candidates. Notably, Joe Biden is endorsed by the California official who directs this tragi-comic voting process, the secretary of state, Alex Padilla.
By contrast, in Colorado, another vote-by-mail state, the secretary of state simply ignores the DNC, sending every independent voter both a Republican and a Democratic party primary ballot -- providing an easy way to vote as they choose.
Will California's voters choose the Democratic candidate" or will the DNC obstacle course bend the outcome?
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