For no particular reason, I thought I'd share two videos of Barack Obama on Fox News.

California will send 441 delegates to the Democratic National Convention.  370 will be determined by the primary election on Tuesday, of which 241 will be determined at the Congressional District Level.  As we saw in Nevada, whether a district has an even or odd number of delegates will count a lot towards whether the popular vote winner there actually will get a delegate advantage.

There are 53 Congressional Districts in California.  21 will send an odd number of delegates to the national convention - 2 CDs with 3 delegates and 19 with 5.  Any delegate who carries any of these CDs will automatically get a 1-delegate advantage.  However, it will be extremely difficult for either candidate to win by a sufficiently large amount to gain a 3-delegate advantage over the other.

The other 32 congressional districts all have an even number of delegates.  Unless whoever wins that district does so by a near landslide, whoever wins the district will not win an advantage in the number of delegates.  Of these 32 districts, six will send 6 delegates to the national convention and the rest will send 4.

Here's a look at all 53 districts in California and who I predict will come out ahead.

From www.hillaryclinton.com:

It seems that way back on September 30, while (innocently?) breaking his pledge not to campaign in the State of Florida, Sen. Obama came out in favor of seating the Flordia delegation.  

According to Sanchez and Tom Scarritt, Obama was asked during the event about making sure Floridians have a role in the nomination, despite the DNC sanctions and the pledge. Scarritt said Obama responded that he'll "do what's right by Florida voters."

Link

So does he now have a new position?  Does he no longer support "doing what's right"?

So the Tradesports people have futures markets for various Election 2008 scenarios.  Among the contracts up for bid are the likelihood of the various candidates becoming the Democratic/Republican nominee and the likelihood of the various candidates of becoming president.

So I figure that some combination of these two contracts will reveal who the market thinks is the strongest candidate for either party.  Say, for instance, the contract for Joe Schmoe becoming the Democratic nominee is trading at 25 and the contract for Mr. Schmoe becoming president is trading at 13.  It stands to reason, then, that the market is essentially telling us that should Schmoe actually become the nominee, he has a 13/25 = 52% chance of winning.

CNN:  http://www.cnn.com/...

VA:  http://sbe.vipnet.org/...

Based on other races, the number of votes cast in the district is closer to 12000 than 16000.  Thus, CNN has made a mistake, overestimating Webb by 4000 votes.

Doesn't mean Webb won't still win, since VA hasn't yet taken into account all of Arlington, Fairfax, or Richmond, and CNN hasn't yet taken into account Charlottesville and the outstanding precincts in Arlington and Fairfax, but Webb is still trailing by less than 1000 votes.

When this gets fixed, I don't want to hear anything about fraud. I found this error by comparing the two websites' returns for the vote results

In any case, I calculated what would happen under varying scenarios of how much of the GOP vote Lieberman gets and how much of the Lieberman vote Lamont gets if Lieberman for Lieberman remains on the ballot.

It was November 2000, Palm Beach, Florida.  And hundreds of retirees were claiming that the confusing, infamous and illegal "butterfly ballot" had caused them to vote for Pat Buchanan instead of Al Gore.

Reports on the "butterfly ballot" made for a an interesting series of anecdotes immediately in the wake of the 2000 election.  But did it really have as great an impact like these people said it did?

Source: Iraq Coaltion Casualty Count

Here's a couple media reports of some of our fallen soldiers: Link

May 10, 2005

* 1st Sgt. Michael J. Bordelon, 37, of Morgan City, La., died at Brooke Army Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas, from injuries sustained April 23 in Mosul, Iraq, when a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device detonated near his Stryker military vehicle.

As some of you know, I strongly objected to the challenge of the Ohio electoral vote which occurred today.  My concern was that the valid issues that Democrats would attempt to raise with respect to fraud and election irregularities would not get sufficient play, and that the focus would instead be on a Democratic challenge to the outcome of the elction.  I was heartened that both Rep. Tubbs-Jones and Sen. Boxer clearly spoke that this challenge was not meant to question the validity of Bush's election, but I am not yet convinced that their framing of the issue is picked up and passed on by the media.  The fact that most Democrats, while ultimately voting "nay" to throwing out the electors, did indeed address the electoral concerns raised by Rep. Conyers' committee probably allows the Democrats to claim not only the high ground, but a more honest evaluation of their concerns.  I congratulate them on getting their concerns heard in Congress.

1.  Was Kerry a good candidate?
There are lots here on the board who think Kerry was the best candidate in this race, ran a fine campaign, and should remain the face of the Democratic party for the time being.  There are also lots of people who think Kerry was a horrible candidate selected for his supposed "electability" who did not adequately face up to the challenge that Bush presented.  People who think this are more likely than not to have supported Dean in the primary.

A less than 2000 vote margin leads to an automatic (machine) recount.

If the margin were less than 150 votes, the law says they must do a "hand" recount (no machines). But what if the machine recount leads to a margin of less than 150 votes-- would that necessitate a handcount? Or, would the ~$700K need to be paid to have a handcount? I would imagine it's worth the cost to have a shot at keeping Rossi out.

elevated by DemFromCT. There's several pockets of unfinished 2004 business, including this squeaker of a race.

Republican Rossi currently has a 187-vote lead of the Democrat Christine Gregoire. There are about 5200 ballots left to count in Washington, 1450 of them in King County.

If the remaining vote in every county breaks exactly according to how that county already voted, Rossi will add 350 votes to his lead for a 537-vote win (oh the irony...)