McCain getting huge chunk of California delegates

In the race for delegates, which ultimately will clinch their parties' nominations, the two California presidential primaries looked much different Wednesday morning.

Arizona Sen. John McCain almost ran the table on the Republican side, while New York Sen. Hillary Clinton was on track to win only 20 to 30 more delegates than her opponent, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

McCain was winning in all but two of the state's 53 congressional districts, one in San Diego and one in Tulare and Fresno counties. According to the party's delegate-counting rules, that's likely to give him all but a handful of the 173 delegates at stake in California.

"He's basically turning this into a winner-take-all state," Hector Barajas, spokesman for the state Republican Party, said Wednesday morning.

The Democratic side was more complicated. Many delegates were allotted by congressional district, proportional to the vote within the district. Democratic Party spokesman Bob Mulholland said that, in the 32 districts with even numbers of delegates, Clinton and Obama were splitting the delegate count down the middle. But in the 21 districts with odd numbers of delegates, Clinton was generally winning one more than Obama.

Overall, that should give her an edge of 20 to 30 in the contest for 241 congressional district delegates. The California party is sending 441 delegates overall, but some are determined by the statewide count, which Clinton won handily, and some are unpledged party leaders.

Going into the vote-counting, one big question was how many voters would bring their vote-by-mail ballots into the polling places on Tuesday.

The bigger that number, voting officials said, the slower the count. Most counties would not even begin counting those ballots until today, Secretary of State Debra Bowen said at a press conference Tuesday.

About 5.5 million vote-by-mail ballots were sent to voters. Only about 3 million of those came in by mail by Monday. Many or most of the remainder were probably delivered by hand to precincts Tuesday, or arrived by mail that day.

Voters held onto to their ballots, Bowen said, because both the Democratic and Republican races have been fluid, with candidates dropping out. It could augur a growing trend. As more Californians vote by mail in coming years, Bowen said, "people will think more about when they want to send their ballots."

There were other complications as well. In Sacramento County, for instance, ballots were being taken to a central location for scanning after precinct-based scanners showed signs of problems in the weeks leading up to the election.

A voter assistance hotline at Bowen's office was fielding about 1,000 calls per hour Tuesday. Some voters who had voted by mail for candidates who later dropped out, for instance, wanted to know if they could vote again.

Some poll workers were refusing to give Democratic ballots to voters who registered as "decline to state," as allowed by party rules, Bowen said.

Even as counties worked to get a count, the parties used their own formulas to calculate the delegate count. A total of 441 delegates were at stake for the Democrats and 173 for the Republicans.

Both parties allocated many of their delegates by the state's 53 congressional districts. But they used different methods. Republicans awarded all three delegates per district to the winner. Democrats awarded delegates - anywhere from three to six per district - in proportion to the vote.

In districts with four delegates, Obama or Clinton would have to get 62.5 percent or more to grab a third delegate - otherwise, they both got two. In six-delegate districts, the threshold for an extra delegate was 58.33 percent.

In a sense, districts with odd-numbered delegates offered a more tantalizing target, because it only took a simple majority to chalk up one more delegate.

The system, however, means that close districts many not be decided for days, while vote-by-mail ballots are counted.