Greetings, my beloved friends! I have a special treat for you, today — and it has to do with the real numbers of the Oregon Primary that took place on Tuesday, the 17th.

First, a Bit About

How This Article Happened

I know that many of us (me included) felt somewhat disappointed by the Oregon results — we had hoped to win a bit bigger there. Indeed, I expected us to! Alas –! On the night of the 17th, around 60% of the vote was reported very quickly (those were the earlier mailed-in ballots) — then, we watched as the percent of the reported votes crawled slowly up to around 92%, at which point I collapsed from exhaustion around 4:30am. The next day, our numbers continued to rise (but at a snails pace!) until the Associated Press was reporting that we had won Oregon with about 56% of the vote, with about 93% of precincts reporting. On the night of the 18th (if I remember correctly), the % of precincts reporting stalled at 95.5% and hasn’t moved since (I’ve been watching it like a hawk!).

Then, today — the 19th — I grew impatient!

I thought to myself, “I’m going to call the Oregon Board of Elections and see what’s taking them so long!” Yesterday, at some point, I had learned that Oregon doesn’t have precincts (because of our mail-in ballots) and it therefore seemed odd that the AP was reporting that 95.5%, or 955 out of 1000 precincts, was reporting.

I called the BoE and had a nice conversation with a man (whose name I won’t reveal) who explained to me, “Yes, we don’t really have precincts,” and, “No, I don’t know when the results will be available, really — but, if it means that much to you, you can call the Elections Division in Multnomah County (that’s Portland, for those of you who aren’t fortunate enough to live in Oregon).”

I thanked him for his time, hung up, and got in touch with the Multnomah County Elections Division (I’m getting to the point, I promise!) — I confirmed that they were still counting the ballots and that there was a massive turnout and they were kind enough to show me some of their online resources. Which brings me to the subject of…

THE REAL NUMBERS

of the Oregon Primary



[UPDATE 5/21: For the newest numbers (including 45,000 votes that the Associated press isn’t reporting!) that I’ve uncovered from the Oregon primary, continue reading in Re-MATH Part II: Return of the Oregon Primary (Again!)]

Behold! I have discovered the true numbers — and no one is reporting them! Google’s primary results and the Guardian’s primary tracker (both of which receive their numbers from the Associated Press) both show that Bernie Sanders has won 320,746, out of 572,485 total votes. Both of them also show that Sanders, so far, has 56.0% of the vote. The Guardian says 95.5% of the vote is in and Google has rounded that up to 96%. I am writing you today to tell you that they are both full of — um, well — let’s just say that they’re lying!

According to the Guardian, all counties have 100% of precincts reporting, except for Multnomah County (which has the largest population), which they report with only 77.7% of precincts reporting — but remember:

We don’t have precincts.

The Oregon BoE confirmed for me that, indeed, Multnomah county has quite a bit of counting left to do. And, according to Multnomah County Elections Divisions, they have so far confirmed that they’ve received:

185,723 out of 269,994 ballots sent out — and counting!

On the morning of the 18th,

at 9:37am there were 154,110 democratic ballots received.

At 3:38pm there were 163,257 received.

At 7:19pm there were 174,050 received.

Today, at 3:39pm there were 185,723 democratic ballots received — and counting.

The AP (and everyone else) is only reporting 152,982 ballots — on top of that, the AP has also been reporting that Bernie Sanders has only won 87,247 votes or 57.0% of those 152,982 — meanwhile, the unofficial count of Multnomah County is… (drum-roll, please)…

108,878 out of 184,392 votes counted, so far!

Which means that Sanders’ current share of the votes in Multnomah is not 57% but 59%, because:

\mathtt{108,878 \div 184,392 = 0.5904}

So the current total is 59% of Multnomah — not 57.0%. And they are still figuring out how many more ballots they’ve received. And, out of the 269,994 ballots that they sent out…

\mathtt{269,994 - 185,723 = 84,271}

…there are 84,271 possible ballots left to account for. Of course, it’s basically impossible that all of those were sent in — but there are potentially quite a few thousand more to be received.

Now, let’s look a little deeper into these new numbers and what they mean for the overall results of the Oregon primary. Instead of 87,247/152,982 for Multnomah County, we’re now looking at 108,878/184,392 — this means that the AP’s count is off by quite a bit. Let’s see exactly how much, by subtracting the updated numbers (from the Elections Division’s most recent update) from the AP’s, like so:

\mathtt{108,878 - 87,247 = 21,631}

…and…

\mathtt{184,392 - 152,982 = 31, 410}

This means that the AP’s current total of 87,247 votes for Bernie in Multnomah County is short by 21,631 votes — and the AP’s current overall total for Multnomah County is short 31,410! Now, check this out — these are the votes that have been counted in Portland after the AP’s reporting stalled at 95.5% about a day ago (also a very misleading number but we’ll deal with that in a bit)! So, when we divide Bernie’s 21,631 votes by the 31,410 total that Portland has counted since, we discover:

\mathtt{21,631 \div 31,410 = 0.6886}

Bernie Sanders has been winning about 68.9% of the votes that are still being counted in Oregon!

The Elections Division updates these estimated totals daily (around 4pm) and I had the good fortune to discover all of this at around 3pm. A bit before 4pm, just as I had finished doing the math, they updated the totals again. I then thought to myself, “Dammit! Now, I have to re-do it all!” But, afterward, I saw that this had been a blessing in disguise…

When I re-did the math, I found that, since the last update (which was last night), they’d added 11,605 more votes to the total received. Out of those, Sanders took 7,834 — which means:

\mathtt{7,834 \div 11,605 = 0.675}

Out of the 11,605 votes that the Elections Division counted since yesterday, Bernie Sanders won 67.5% of them! Now, let’s discuss another implication of all these new developments — we have to ask ourselves…

Why isn’t the Associated Press reporting the results?

I mean, isn’t this worth reporting? Weren’t you all wondering why the % of “precincts” reporting had stalled at 95.5%? Weren’t millions of people eager to know the full results of the Oregon Democratic Primary? I know I was! Why wouldn’t the Associated Press (the organization responsible for informing most of the media about election results) be just as interested in reporting the live results from Oregon as it has been in reporting the live results from all of the other primaries? And why didn’t any news organization bug them about it or find the results themselves, like I did? These are important questions, my friends — but, before we answer them, I want to show you one more thing.

Do you remember how I told you that Oregon doesn’t have precincts? It is odd, isn’t it — that the AP has the results divided into 1,000 imaginary precincts? And why are they saying that 95.5% of them are reporting? What does that mean? Most people would assume (me, included) that 95.5% of the results of the election were being reported — as you will see in a moment, that is not the case.

We now know that the Elections Division in Multnomah County has so far counted an estimated 185,793 ballots — but the AP had stopped counting Multnomah County’s results a day ago and they left the total at 77.7% of “precincts” reporting and 152,982 votes. Observe:

\mathtt{185,723 - 152,982 = 32,741}

There are, so far, at least 32,741 votes they haven’t accounted for and possibly quite a few more. Right now, they are still reporting that there have been a total of 572,485 votes cast in all of Oregon. 95.5% reporting, huh?

\mathtt{572,485 + 32,741 = 605,226}

…and…

\mathtt{572,485 \div 605,226 = .945}

Or 94.5% and, oddly enough — falling every day.

The results of the Oregon primaries appear to have stalled at 96% of “precincts” reporting, with Sanders at 56.0% and Clinton at 44.0% — but the truth is that there is much less than 94.5% of the vote reporting. Of what is left, Sanders seems to be taking about 69% — and he’s currently defeating Clinton’s 43.3% with 56.7% or 342,377 out of 603,895 votes counted —

So far.

Now, let me elaborate a bit on the reason I said that 94.5% will be falling…

In 2008 (you know, the last time that Clinton lost Oregon to a more-progressive candidate?), the voter turnout among democrats in Mulnomah County was just a bit under 72% by June 9th — at the moment (11:25pm, 5/19), it’s a very high-turnout year — and we’re sitting at 68.7%.

On the 18th, about 20,000 more votes were added to Multnomah’s total and between yesterday evening and 3:39pm today, the 19th, 11,605 more votes rolled in. Rest assured — more votes will be added tomorrow and we’ll be taking 69% of them, widening our spread and wriggling further toward that 60% mark.

On top of this, I’ve learned (when I spoke with the BoE, earlier) that the majority of counties are not “100% reporting!” For the most part, those totals are just the AP’s estimates, based on the earlier mail-in ballots (among a few other mysterious factors). Marion County, for instance — where Salem, our capitol, is — has only an estimated 82.1% of the vote reporting, at the time of this writing — while both Lane and Clackamas counties (two of the more populated areas around Eugene and Portland) have only counted an estimated 95% and 87% of their votes, as well! But we’ll talk about that more, in a later post.

My friends — I shall update this post soon, after more research and with better projections of the final results — but I wanted to get some of the real numbers out now. The people should know that Oregon will very likely be giving Bernie a heftier win than it first appeared. But you won’t hear the talking heads say anything about it on TV. Tomorrow (hopefully), I will explain more about this with some more math because the state’s Board of Elections informed me that they will probably be waiting until mid-June to announce the full results!

In the meantime, would you make sure that the real numbers make their way around the internet a few times? There is a great deal of misinformation being reported lately (think of the “chair-throwing” in Nevada, comparing Berners to Trump’s supporters, Hillary’s claim that she will be the nominee, today, etc.) — this increasing corporate-media propaganda is because they’re realizing that our movement is growing more and more powerful — they are getting desperate! So desperate that they are now lying right to our faces and trying to sweep election results under the rug. No matter what they say — keep up the fight!

Like I’ve said before — we must be the media, now.

I’ll write to you again, very soon.

In solidarity,

John Laurits #SeeYouInPhilly

P.S. Don’t forget to DONATE & PHONEBANK! Particularly, don’t forget to PHONEBANK! The deadline for registering as a democrat in California is fast approaching — you know what’s at stake!

*You may follow John on Twitter @JohnLaurits. And, if ye’d like, you can also help out by buying John coffee HERE, which he is always very grateful for.