6:30 pm ET

The media is now playing up a "Biden bounce" after his victory in tiny, unrepresentative South Carolina, and late endorsements.

Salon.com - Joe Biden surges ahead of Bernie Sanders in delegate projection after boost in Super Tuesday polls

"Former Vice President Joe Biden is now projected to win the most delegates in the Democratic primary as a slew of new Super Tuesday polls find his campaign surging. Election forecaster FiveThirtyEight, which long forecasted Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to win a plurality of pledged delegates, now shows Biden as the odds-on favorite to lead the field."

At the same time, reports of an almost exact replay of voter registration problems in California, the huge delegate state where Sanders was far ahead in polls, threaten to tamp down Sanders haul of delegates. Voters are forced to vote on "provisional ballots."

KTLA5 News - 15 counties in California experiencing problems with computers tied to statewide voter database.

"...state elections officials reported that 15 counties had experienced problems with their computer systems connecting to California’s statewide voter database. While voters could still cast ballots, the problem meant there was no way to update registration records or show that a citizen had voted. To avoid any chance of someone voting more than once, some locations were asking voters to cast provisional ballots — a fail-safe method of voting in which eligibility is confirmed after election day and before the vote is counted."

UK Guardian - California's rules for independent party voters could suppress the Bernie vote

"In February, California mailed 3.7m primary ballots that, to the astonishment of many who received them, excluded the presidential candidates. These ballots do have candidates for all other primary races, including for Congress, but not the race for president. Within this mountain of primary ballots, artifacts of California’s arcane and complex voting system, lies the potential to cripple the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders, the favored candidate among independent party voters."

At the same time, there are reports that Texas, the next biggest cache of delegates, is now in play after a strong Sanders lead for weeks.

California still has more than four more hours of voting.

7:20 ET

There are more reports of voter registration problems in California; I will provide screenshots and links soon. Voters registered as Democrats for 20 years who've never had a problem voting are suddenly dropped from the rolls and must cast a provisional ballot. Recall that the DNC's NGP-VAN database contains all records of donations to primary candidates—it's easy to see who supports whom.

Talking points on the "Biden bounce" seem strangely aligned. Recall how Hillary was touted as "Comeback Kid" after dismal performances in 2016 Iowa and NH contests.

7:35 ET

Looks like Sanders was almost 10 points up over Biden in Texas as recently as the last week in February, and 15 points in an NBC/Marist 2/23 - 2/27 poll. However, the poll aggregator Real Clear Politics in its latest average only cited two pollsters, Emerson College which calls landlines only and also uses an online survey, and Data for Progress which uses a "text-to-web" methodology, in other words, anonymous online respondents who pursue surveys. Landline only polls are criticized for skewing towards elderly and shut-ins. The majority of people in the US under the age of 35 have only cellphones, no landline.

Poll averages published by Real Clear Politics as of 2/27, before the "Biden bounce."

Polls Going into Super Tuesday

California

Sanders: 30%

Biden: 10%

Warren: 17%

Bloomberg: 12%

Texas

Sanders 30%

Biden: 21%

Warren: 13%

Bloomberg: 18%

Colorado

Sanders: 30%

Biden: 10%

Warren: 17%

Bloomberg: 12%

Massachusetts

Sanders 25%

Biden: 11%

Warren: 21%

Bloomberg: 12%

Sanders: 25%

Biden: 18%

Warren: 11%

Bloomberg: 19%

8:15 ET

Voter Counter-measures

In California, the Secretary of State should be prevented from making any announcements on results whatsoever until all of the suddenly necessary "provisional ballots" are counted. In addition, the state should direct all jurisdictions to post the digital images of the ballots for public verification of the machine counts. These are the images of each ballot that are automatically generated by the optical scanner vote-counting machines that tally the votes on the paper ballots. They are entirely anonymous.

Most voting districts in the US use optical scanner vote-counting machines to tally paper ballots, and most optical scanner vote-counting machines automatically generate and store digital ballot images. For help on this in your own district contact Audit Elections USA, a non-profit citizens' election integrity organization.

8:50 ET

A commenter at Yahoo News makes a good point: Now "momentum" has been compressed to not days or weeks between primaries to literally hours, when people don't even know what is going on in other states. Or it could be a set-up. First there was the bounce, then there was the momentum. Apologies for exiting my reportorial tone but do they really think people are this stupid?