Biden Has Delegates for Nomination     06/06 09:55

   After primaries and caucuses in 42 states and the District of Columbia, Joe 
Biden has won the last few delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination 
for president as states worked to tally a surge of mail ballots.

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- After primaries and caucuses in 42 states and the 
District of Columbia, Joe Biden has won the last few delegates needed to clinch 
the Democratic nomination for president as states worked to tally a surge of 
mail ballots.

   Indiana, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island were among the seven states, plus the 
district, holding elections Tuesday. But a huge increase in vote-by-mail 
ballots, driven in large part by the coronavirus pandemic, meant election 
officials were still counting ballots Friday.

   Democrats don't hold winner-take-all contests in which the top vote-getter 
wins all the delegates. Instead, the delegates are split up proportionally 
among the candidates based on their share of the vote -- both statewide and in 
individual congressional districts.

   As the states that voted Tuesday updated their results, a team of analysts 
at The Associated Press parsed the votes into the correct congressional 
districts so the delegates could be allocated between Biden and Bernie Sanders.

   The process led the AP to allocate 21 delegates to Biden late Friday, after 
it completed an analysis of votes released by election officials in the three 
states earlier in the evening. AP later added two more to Biden's total, after 
the release of additional results in New Mexico.

   The former vice president now has a total of 1,995 delegates. It takes 1,991 
delegates to win the nomination on the first ballot at the Democratic National 
Convention.

   Biden became the party's presumptive nominee two months ago, following 
decisive wins over Bernie Sanders in several March primaries and in Wisconsin 
on April 7. The Vermont senator, the final major challenger in the race, 
dropped out the next day.

   Biden would have wrapped up the Democratic nomination much earlier, if not 
for the coronavirus pandemic -- 15 states, along with Guam and Puerto Rico, 
postponed their nominating contests due to the outbreak.

   The formality of reaching 1,991 was also delayed by a deal Biden's campaign 
cut with Sanders in an effort to build Democratic Party unity and avoid the 
bitter feelings that marred the party's 2016 convention and helped lead to 
Hillary Clinton's defeat. The agreement allowed Sanders to keep about 300 
delegates he would have otherwise forfeited under party rules after suspending 
his campaign.

   It's not unusual for a Democratic nominee to clinch the party's nomination 
in early June. That's when Barack Obama in 2008 and Clinton in 2016 reached the 
milestone.

   Both Obama and Clinton still had active opponents when they did so, although 
they were helped by superdelegates. Those are the Democratic Party leaders and 
elected officials who can vote for any candidate, regardless of the outcome of 
the primaries.

   While superdelegates have never overturned the will of primary voters, their 
power was greatly reduced ahead of the 2020 election in a concession to Sanders 
supporters who saw them as undemocratic.

   About 800 superdelegates can still participate in this summer's convention, 
but they won't be able to vote on the first ballot unless their votes would 
have no effect on the outcome.