On Monday, on the eve of the most important day in the primary, on a day where not a single vote was cast, Hillary Clinton was surprisingly declared the winner of the Democratic Primary.
Tuesday was scheduled to be the single biggest day of the entire Democratic Primary season with a total of 694 pledged delegates up for grabs in California, New Jersey, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and New Mexico.
In the past 45 days alone, more than 650,000 new voters registered in California and the state announced that with 72% of available voters registered, it was the highest percentage of people ever registered for primaries in the state.
This should have been a celebration for the Democratic Party as it welcomed record numbers of new voters into the fold. Instead, something far more nefarious and underhanded has happened. New voters didn't put Hillary Clinton over the top. Pledged delegates didn't seal the deal. It wasn't a recount of a primary or caucus.
It was a survey - an anonymous survey.
Yes, you read that correctly - a survey. The Associated Press conducted a secret survey of super-delegates, in which they promised to protect their identities, and determined that just enough of them, the perfect number actually, said they intended to vote for Hillary Clinton 50 days from now during the Democratic Convention. For the AP, that was enough to go ahead and call the race for her.
Let me say that in a different way.
A secret survey of politicians and party insiders on whether or not they will actually vote for Hillary Clinton during the Democratic Convention on July 25 in Philadelphia is what the AP used to call this race a done deal.
It's disgusting.
Hillary Clinton actually has 1,812 pledged delegates that were earned from the actual voters in actual primaries and caucuses. She needed 571 delegates to cross the threshold of 2,383 to secure the nomination. With 694 up for grabs Tuesday, she would have to win 82.3% of Tuesday’s delegates to actually secure the nomination. She hasn't won 82.3% of the vote in a single state during this entire election.
Besides feeling like they "got the scoop" before anyone else, why did the Associated Press feel the need to do this right before the final major day of voting?
AP executive editor Kathleen Carroll said in a statement, “by Monday evening, 571 superdelegates had told us unequivocally that they intend to vote for Clinton at the convention. Adding that number to the delegates awarded to Clinton in primary and caucus voting to date gave her the number needed to be the presumptive nominee."
But even this begs more questions. Who asked those new anonymous superdelegates to make their vote known the evening before the primary? Did the AP find them on happenstance or did the Clinton campaign encourage them to come forward.
Christina Bellantoni, of the Los Angeles Times found that the graphic created by Hillary Clinton's campaign celebrating the Associated Press announcement was titled "secret win" and appeared to be created on Saturday, June 4, days before the announcement was even made. Whatever their intention with that title, it rings true - what happened last night was indeed a secret win.
But it wasn't a win for democracy. Any reasonable person would agree that by declaring Hillary Clinton the winner on the eve of the biggest day of the primary suppresses the vote. We will never quite know what would have happened in California, New Jersey, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and New Mexico had the Associated Press not declared that the race was already over.
How motivated will people be in those states now to show up versus how they might have felt if they thought they race was actually still on - which it is.
Hillary Clinton has not won. You don't win an election based on an anonymous survey of party elites who don't even vote for 50 days.
Welcome to America - where our democracy and the so-called Democratic Party - are about as undemocratic as it gets.
