California certifies low primary turnout, Clinton victory

(AP) — California Secretary of State Alex Padilla certified Friday that more than 8.5 million people, or 47.7 percent of registered voters, participated in the June primary, and that Hillary Clinton decisively won the state's Democratic race.

Turnout just surpassed the 47.5 percent of California's 1992 primary — the lowest participation rate of the four presidential primaries without an incumbent in at least the last quarter century, according to the secretary of state's office.

[...] election experts had held out hope that a contested Democratic primary, although winding down, would draw enough new voters in the liberal state to further exceed expectations.

"Considering all the election hype and media coverage and money and the fact that Clinton and Bernie Sanders had rallied across the state, you could have argued that we'd see more," said Mindy Romero, director of the California Civic Engagement Project at the University of California, Davis.

There were also hundreds of thousands of provisional ballots that require extra verification and take longer to record, many from voters not affiliated with either party who did not realize they had to specifically request a Democratic ballot to participate in the Democratic presidential primary.