McCain adds 50 delegates to tally
LANSING, Mich. — Sen. John McCain, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, picked up 50 GOP national convention delegates from Michigan and Louisiana on Saturday.
Republicans met in both states to resolve how to divvy up delegates to the national convention in September.
Thirty-two of Louisiana’s 47 delegates told The Associated Press they intend to vote for McCain.
A majority of Michigan’s presidential delegates say they’ll back the Arizona senator now that primary winner Mitt Romney is out of the race.
As a result, McCain has 903 total delegates nationally, according to an Associated Press tally. A total of 1,191 is needed to secure the nomination.
California flattens, counts votes
SAN FRANCISCO — It has been nearly two weeks since primary day in California, and Stephen Weir is still ironing ballots.
Like many of his counterparts across the state, Weir, the registrar in Contra Costa County, east of San Francisco, is still counting votes from the Feb. 5 election. Because of the weight and fold of some of the absentee ballots, Weir says, he and his staff have to steam them to allow them to be fed into vote-counting machines.
“Last election, the clerk ironed about 13,000 ballots,” Weir said. “There’s a setting just below ‘cotton’ and just above ‘wool’ that works pretty well. ‘Silk’ is also a really good setting.”
Election officials say a combination of high turnout, technology flaws and millions of mailed-in and dropped-off ballots have led to painstakingly slow returns in some counties, with nearly 800,000 ballots remaining to be processed.
Elder Bush set to endorse McCain
Former President George H.W. Bush will endorse John McCain in Texas on Monday, Republican officials said.
The endorsement represents another step in McCain’s tightening grip on the Republican presidential nomination. The officials spoke Friday on condition of anonymity because the formal announcement is this week.
