Why did California pass?

With 441 delegates, California's was the largest delegation at the Democratic Convention.  The delegation break-down was roughly 240 votes for Hillary and 200 for Obama.  During the contrived "roll call vote" on Wednesday, California passed.  (New Mexico and Illinois did not pass.  They "yielded" so that New York, and Hillary, could move to make the nomination unanimous.)

But why did California pass?  The LA Times reports that the reason was because they couldn't get their ballots counted in time.

The answer has nothing to do with the complicated calculations we presumed might be at work. Instead, according to Bob Mulholland, a senior advisor to the state party, California took a pass simply because a tally of its 441 votes was still underway when the state's name was called.

The vote was supposed to have been taken at the delegation's morning breakfast.  The breakfast was over by 9:00, which would have left at least 7 hours to count 441 ballots.  One person could have counted those ballots in less than an hour so, frankly, that story is simply not believable. 

What's more, though the votes have now apparently been counted, they still have not been released to the public.  A spokesman for the California Democratic Party said that the Labor Day weekend interfered with getting the votes counted and the number released.  Six days to count 441 votes?

Democratic rules forbid secret ballots, yet the DNC refuses to make public the actual tallies and ballot sheets from the morning caucuses.  This means that nobody can check which delegates voted according to their pledge and which ones switched.  The question remains:  Why did California pass? 

Comments

[lillianjane]

I think we know the answer to that, although I admire your restraint in not speculating.

[John Petty]

OK, I'll speculate: I think they didn't want a big Hillary delegation to announce their vote.

The word I got was that, even after Hillary withdrew, she still retained about 170 delegates votes (out of 240, or thereabouts). They didn't like the sound of that so they put the word out for California to pass. I can't prove that, but that's what I think.

What do YOU think?