The Democratic primary season is now behind us. Before we completely turn our attention to the general election, though, I want to take one last glance at how far we’ve come since candidates first announced their intentions to run. This video from Slate is a great run through — and covers a ton of ground in just eight minutes. And I promise, after this, we can start forgetting about the primaries.

Image details: Barack Obama Campaigns Throughout Oregon Ahead Of State’s Primary served by picapp.com

Yesterday, Barack Obama held a rally on the banks of the Willamette River to start getting Oregonians excited about Tuesday’s primary.

75,000 people came. Heck, the rally went beyond standing room only on the river banks to crowding the river itself: small craft (including kayaks) loaded with Obama supporters were out on the water.

To put it nicely, Oregon and Kentucky’s primaries tend not to matter. After all, in a typical election year, both parties have an obvious nominee long before May rolls around. But, as we continue to watch the Democratic nomination process move on, we can all tell that this year is different from all others.

Both states are already experiencing higher-than-normal voting turnout, through early voting (absentee, etc.). They aren’t get some of the extraordinary turnouts that other states have experienced, although we may want to add ‘yet’ to that statement. Kentucky’s Board of Election, as of Friday evening, reported about 19,000 voters had already turned in ballots — about 196 percent of the number that had done so at the same time during the 2004 election cycle.

The Democratic primary machine keeps grinding on.

Image details: Hillary Clinton Holds Pennsylvania Primary Night Rally served by picapp.com

Hillary Clinton won the Pennsylvania primary with 55% of the vote last night. She picked up 75 delegates, while Barack Obama picked up another 65. But for all the smiles and speeches, Democratic voters are pretty much in the same spot as they were last week: Obama still has a respectable lead over Clinton — although not enough to actually get him the nomination.

As the Democratic nomination process drags onward, I think that both Obama and Clinton are doing more harm than good: the only way that this contest will be decided before the convention is if one candidate literally wins every delegate left. That won’t happen, by the way. Even if someone decides to bow out gracefully, that person will still pick up a few delegates between now and the convention — heck, Mike Huckabee won 11% of Republican votes in Pennsylvania, and he isn’t even running anymore.

The primary system creates division in political parties, but there’s usually a clear front runner by this point for both parties. John McCain is doing what a presumptive nominee should be doing at this point in the race: he’s soothing ruffled feathers, getting the supporters of other Republican candidates to join his fight and putting together the fundraising machine that will handle the real fight. The Democratic party is losing time — and as both Clinton and Obama tap into more and more fundraising sources, the actual nominee, whoever that will be, is losing the opportunity to call on those supporters for money later on.

But Clinton will keep fighting. And it’s a close enough race that she might just win, especially after the first round of voting at the Democratic convention accomplishes nothing. 1952 was the last time that the Democratic convention took more than one vote to select a candidate, but it looks like they’re about to break their 56-year run.

There isn’t another presidential primary for almost six weeks. Whatever shall we (and the candidates do with ourselves) until Pennsylvania is ready to hold their primary?

I’m sure all of the candidates will be spending time on fundraising — even with the end of the primary season in sight, most of the campaigns feel stretched. There are still 11 primaries to be contested, and even John McCain’s claim on the Republican nomination doesn’t stop his need to at least make a token effort to win the upcoming contests. This window does provide an opportunity for a head start in those states, though, making it easier to spread campaign stops out a little bit, and allow candidates to get just a bit more sleep than they’ve had the opportunity for in the past several months. Heck, they might even have enough time to be active in the Senate — you know, the august body that all three major candidates still hold offices in.

Puerto Rico’s Democratic Party moved the date of their primary from June 7 to June 1, according to an article in El Nuevo Día (Spanish-only). They also changed their method of selecting delegates from a caucus to a primary. Democrats in Puerto Rico will be deciding on 56 delegates — a higher number than 27 states — and could play a far more significant role in choosing a nominee than they have in years past. 

The date is being switched because election law requires Puerto Rico’s primary to be held the first Sunday of June, which is the 1st. The original date was a clerical error, and the DNC is expected to approve the change without any dispute.

So far, this decision hasn’t gotten much attention from the mainstream media, although it’s flitting across the blogosphere pretty quickly. I learned of it from Politico, who in turn got it from DemConWatch.

As other political junkies spent yesterday evening watching the slow count of votes from the Maryland primary, I was grinding into my fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth hours as an election judge. I entered my precinct before 6 a.m. and didn’t leave until almost 11 p.m.

It wasn’t supposed to be quite that grueling — the polls were slated to close at 8 p.m., and tear down only takes an hour because both a Republican judge and Democratic judge are required to participate in just about every step to guarantee that there is no partisan hanky-panky. But there’s just no having an election without someone getting worried about something, and in Maryland’s case, it was some pretty nasty weather. Polling places were ordered to take provisional ballots until 9:30 p.m. to make sure that no one lost an opportunity to vote.

What did I notice?

Our precinct had a pretty high number of provisional ballots: plenty of people came to vote who clearly hadn’t done so for years. We’re talking about people with addresses on the books that they’d left before the last presidential election. This election has people turning out!

For an area that’s mostly families, we had an impressive youth turn out — many 17 year olds (who are eligible to vote in the Maryland primary as long as they’ll be 18 by the general election) turned up. The Maryland Democratic party has released numbers to the effect of 68% of these 17 year old voters have registered as Democrats, and those numbers held up. Then again, we did have 3 Democrats vote for every Republican yesterday.

Some judges work the polls because they feel fairly strongly about politics — but not a one of us was willing to commit ourselves to a political opinion beyond our party affiliation. There were a few of us who made it pretty clear that they were there for the $165 the county pays for a day of judging. The county had enlisted a number of those 17 year olds who were going to be voting for the first time — to a high school kid, $165 is a lot. They did take the job seriously, though, which I think counts in their favor.

The electronic voting machines are viewed lower than black magic in most people’s opinions. Even the judges had plenty of questions about them. However, we lucked out. Only one of our machines went down over the course of the polling. This is levels above the descriptions from experienced judges of past elections, when cards were missing, machines went down and other issues.

And the winner is…

Obama and McCain have carried the Potomac primaries. They carried my precinct as well. Those funny strips of paper in the picture above are the precinct totals which, by law, must be posted for public display. Cameras can’t be used in the polling place, but since the printouts from the electronic voting machines are public information, I snapped a picture with my phone for the readers of One Vote Matters

Washington state’s Republican Party Chairman Luke Esser holds a B.A. in Accounting, but you have got to wonder if the man slept through his statistics courses. He called the state’s Saturday primary for McCain with only 87.2 percent of the vote counted — and it gets worse. With almost 13 percent of the votes uncounted, John McCain had less than a 2 percent lead on Mike Huckabee. I sure as heck wouldn’t be comfortable calling that race without knowing how those last votes were going to fall.

Esser says that they did an analysis that proved that McCain was guaranteed to hold on in an interview with the Seattle Times:

“Let’s take every county where Huckabee is beating McCain, and double the margin of victory. And then take every county where McCain is winning and cut in half that margin of victory. Even if you assume that, Sen. McCain still holds on.”

The only person who doesn’t seem to have spoken out about Esser’s error in judgment is McCain. Huckabee is threatening legal action — as of yesterday, 93 percent of votes had been counted, providing a safer margin of error, but Huckabee’s campaign has made statements to the effect that there were other irregularities.

The voters don’t seem exactly pleased, either, and they shouldn’t be. Esser’s decision may prove a costly mistake, forcing the Republicans to spend time and money in Washington state when they should be moving on to Washington D.C., where the ‘Potomac primaries’ (Maryland, Virginia and D.C.) will be held tomorrow. We may even be seeing legal expenses if Huckabee sticks to his guns.

It should come as no surprise that Fred Thompson has dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination. His supporters had been urging him to run since the middle of last year, when lukewarm support for other potential Republican candidates seemed to leave room for a ‘Reagan conservative’ like Thompson to energize the party. But when he finally declared his candidacy in September of 2007, his lackluster performance at campaign events and bland policy positions left his audiences dreary.

Thompson’s fundraising suffered from the outset. Since his campaign’s late start last fall, he has raised only $12.8 million, placing him a distant fourth behind McCain ($32.1 million), Giuliani ($47.2 million), and Romney ($62.8 million).

Of course, fundraising doesn’t tell the whole story. Giuliani’s $47 million hasn’t bought him a strong primary showing yet (to be fair, he has focused primarily [no pun intended] on Florida), and Huckabee’s tiny $2.3 million earned him at least a short moment in the sun. So let’s take a look at Thompson’s performance in the primaries thus far:

• Iowa: His 13% support wasn’t necessarily a disaster. After all, he tied with John McCain.
• Wyoming: With 25% of caucusgoers’ support, he came in a distant second behind Mitt Romney’s 67% finish. But since only Romney and Thompson contested that state, it was a sound defeat for Thompson.
• New Hampshire: Thompson’s last-place finish, with just 1% of the vote, was another tough loss for a candidate whose fiscally conservative message should have resonated with New Hampshire Republicans.
• Michigan: More bad news for Thompson here, another state in which his ‘Reagan conservatism’ should have played well. He finished fifth among the Republicans, with only 4% of the vote. Only Giuliani, who did not seriously contest the state, did worse.
• Nevada: Again, only Giuliani, who was absent from the state, scored lower than Thompson’s 8%.
• South Carolina: Thompson’s third place finish here was good news, but only comparatively. He garnered 16% of the vote, about half of what second-place finisher Mike Huckabee received.

With consistently poor election results and little money coming in to fight the big states of Florida (January 29), California (February 5), and New York (February 5), the time had simply come for Fred Thompson to call it quits.

…And if Giuliani’s relentless pursuit of Florida doesn’t earn him a stunning victory next week, he may very well be next.

For the past week, it seems like every political blog has been covering who will get the Des Moines Register’s endorsement for the upcoming primary. Why is one particular news media so important in a campaign? Why did Bill Clinton spend hours in the editorial office of the Des Moines register currying favor for his wife?

The Des Moines Register is “The Newspaper Iowa Depends On.” It’s not just the daily for Des Moines — it’s delivered all over the state every day. I have family in Centerville, Iowa (population 5,924) way down in southern Iowa. They all read the Register, and barely glance over their local weekly. The Sunday circulation is well over 230,000, and in an age of declining newspaper readership, that’s doing pretty good.

The Des Moines Register has a reputation as a Democratic paper. From 1903 to 1985, it was owned by the Cowles family, many members of which wound up holding high positions in various Democratic presidential administrations. This actually reflects Iowa population, which has a tendency to edge just a bit to the left.

In other words, the Register really is a major authority in Iowa. Their endorsements for both the Democratic and Republican candidacies hold a lot of sway, although more so for Democrats. Their endorsement will reach most of the 1.8 million voters in the state, and will have far more sway than an ad bought by some campaign. Most Iowans will see the endorsement (whether or not they agree with it) as formed by some of the best-informed people in the state.

Most people assume that the only way to make money from an election is to bet on the outcome or sell their vote. In reality, you can make a day’s wages by offering to work as an election judge in your precinct. Depending on your state, your local election board will pay anywhere between $30 and $150 — this is one of those variable expenses that makes the actual cost of an election so hard to determine, by the way — for an election judge. This isn’t just a once every four years sort of thing, by the way. Primaries count, too, and some states pay for election judges for state and municipal elections, as well.

There’s a certain sort of person who typically signs up for this job, by the way: retirees. Almost no election judges are under 55. It’s not an issue of an age requirement — instead, it’s the fact that a judge has to be available all day on a Tuesday, which is a work day for most younger people.

Why am I mentioning election judging today? Well, most states are perpetually short of judges, and will be needing them quite soon, especially with the early primaries starting so soon. If you have any interest in getting involved in the political process yourself, go on and sign up with your local election board.