It's Thursday, June 4, 2006.

I'm Albert Mowler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

Well, there are so many things going on, but certainly the primary election that was held this past Tuesday.

Most importantly in California, it's given the fact

that it's the nation's largest state and its governor's seat is open. That has attracted a lot of

attention, but it's also attracting a lot of frustration. And the reason for that is quite simple.

California's very liberal, very bureaucratic voting process means that ballots are counted,

absentee, mail ballots are counted,

even if they're postmarked on the day of the election. And so that means that you have to wait for something like two weeks to make certain, that's a commentary on the Postal Service and all the

rest as well. You have to wait an inordinate amount of time until you have the ballots. The ballots are counted,

but it does mean that under certain circumstances, you could be, say, looking at a month before

anyone knows exactly what the fall, the November gubernatorial ballot is going to look like in the

state of California. There's another reason for that. California has what is called a

jungle primary. I think you should think of this in Darwinian terms, the survival of the fittest.

And so what that means is that it is not party-based. There is not going to be a Republican and a

Democratic nominee to face off. Note the question in the primary is which two candidates receive the most votes regardless

of party affiliation and they will face off in the November election.

Okay, so here is where the Democrats in California found themselves in a very strange predicament.

Two big issues.

Issue number one, there was no absolutely clear

frontrunner, then there was, then he was out, and then there was another front runner, but we don't

know, even at this point, we might not know for a matter of weeks if the frontrunner was actually

...