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.

Particularly at risk of losing their vote are 18- to 24-year-olds and Latinx voters, groups that strongly favor “Tio Bernie”. A quarter of independent voters, more than 1 million people, are Latinx, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

Even if Sanders, as expected, wins the plurality of California’s votes, he could well be shorted out of hundreds of thousands of votes and scores of delegates. ...The Democratic National Committee chiefs, who created and uphold the rules, show little sympathy for the millions of non-Democrats who want to exercise their right to vote in their primary but refuse to register as Democrats.

And that could be because they will continue to back only establishment candidates. Notably, Joe Biden is endorsed by the California official who directs this tragi-comic voting process, the secretary of state, Alex Padilla.

By contrast, in Colorado, another vote-by-mail state, the secretary of state simply ignores the DNC, sending every independent voter both a Republican and a Democratic party primary ballot – providing an easy way to vote as they choose.

Will California’s voters choose the Democratic candidate ... or will the DNC obstacle course bend the outcome?