By Dave Lindorff
FLASH! The Los Angeles Times, actually a Hillary Clinton backer, reports that not 3.6 million votes, as reported on election night, but 8 million votes were actually cast in the California Democratic primary -- a turnout of 47%. According to the Times article, the Secretary of State of California, Alex Padilla, concedes that 2.5 million of those votes, mostly mail-in ballots from young people and hispanic voters, both backers of Sanders, have been counted, and another 2 million have yet to be counted by local county officials.
But Padilla has also not reported on what the results were of those other 2.5 million votes that have already been counted thus far since election day. (This even though his office did report the count of early mail-in votes on election day before people had even finished voting.)
All the votes are legitimate and need to be counted. As long as a ballot was received by the end of the day Friday, and were postmarked by election day, they are valid.
The Times said that people should prepare to see the vote totals of not just the presidential race, but also down-ticket races, change dramatically.
The problem is that the Secretary of State gets 30 days to certify the votes and declare winners. That would be July 8!
Don't just take my word for it. Check it out at the Los Angeles Times .
Clearly, Sanders, who is reportedly meeting with close friends and advisors tomorrow at his home in Burlington, VT, should not make any hasty decisions about conceding the race! Maybe folks in Vermont and nearby states who want Sanders to stay in the race, and even to run in the general election, perhaps as the Green Party's candidate, should go demonstrate outside his home and let him know.
DAVE LINDORFF is a member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the uncompromised, collectively run, five-time Project Censored Award-winning online news site. His work, and that of colleagues JOHN GRANT, JESS GUH, GARY LINDORFF, ALFREDO LOPEZ, LINN WASHINGTON, JR. and the late CHARLES M. YOUNG, is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net