Nearly 2.6 million votes outstanding in California primary

However, there was arguably much more passion and intensity in the 2008 Democratic race, and the numbers bear that out: Obama beat Clinton in the popular primary vote by a mere 41,662 ballots – an 0.1 percent margin of victory.

California election workers embraced an expanded electorate totaling almost 18 million registered voters with a few hiccups reported late Tuesday.

A surge of 650,000 new voters less than two months ahead of the June 7 primary sets up a potentially big turnaround from the historically low turnout of 2014. Contra Costa planned to accommodate 60 percent of registrants, and Alameda hoped to hit 70 percent. Also, on Monday, before the Tuesday vote, Clinton reached the number of delegates needed to become the presumptive Democratic nominee, according to a count by The Associated Press.

“It’s certainly easy to register to vote”, said Orange County registrar of voters Neal Kelley.

In a “top-two” election, the two candidates with the most votes, regardless of party, face-off in the general election.

Riverside County voters only gave Harris 29 percent of the vote and Sanchez finished with 19 percent.

Orange County fared better with 34.2 percent turnout so far, while Riverside County trailed behind Los Angeles at a 27.5 percent clip. Counties have until early July to count and certify all ballots. Former Benicia City Councilmember and businessman Mike Ioakimedes took second place in the Solano County Board of Supervisors’ District 2 race where he will be running against Solano Community College board trustee Monica Brown.

“But then when they got the ballot with the 34 candidates for Senate, and who’s my congressman, and what’s this ballot proposition, and where do I keep a stamp and all these things … they kind of fell off and they didn’t participate in the same numbers”, Mitchell said.

Siskiyou County Clerk-Registrar Colleen Setzer said about 20 new vote-counting machines experienced sporadic failures, but did not interfere with voting in the Northern California region.

“For no party preference voters it was honestly quite a challenge we tried everything we could think of with our limited budget to make sure the information was out there”, said Secretary of State Alex Padilla.

“They just got lost in the shuffle”.

Clinton’s lead “might go down into the single digits, but it’s still going to be a Clinton win”, DiCamillo said. The majority of Republicans – 52 percent – also prefer open primaries and caucuses.

There were no surprises in Tuesday’s political party primaries, as Democratic voters in the five Princeton Packet-area towns joined voters statewide to give their votes to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party nomination for president.

Take, for example, a recent report from the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights that found, on average, that the eligible voter turnout in states with primaries throughout 2016 has been 32.4 percent as opposed to just 9.9 percent for caucus states.

The Field Poll forecast that as many as 5 million voters would cast mail-in ballots, which had to be mailed by the June 7 primary.