On Tuesday, Keith Olbermann invited NBC News human delegate calculator Chuck Todd on to Countdown to discuss the latest tallies from the Democratic Primary. Todd said that “last week” Barack Obama magically earned four more delegates in California than previously reported. The way he phrased his statement made it sound like lollygagging election officials in the Golden State took their sweet time getting around to counting things like provisional ballots. “California,” he said, “they always have a lot of late votes to count.”

Todd’s gloss-over was exactly the kind we’ve come to depend on from our media experts. Yes, thank you, please spare us the details. Except that the details of the delegate pledging and counting are still more likely to affect the outcome of the Democratic primary contest than any of the personality stories filling the front pages.

Turns out the California Secretary of State’s office issued the revised results less than two weeks after the Super Tuesday vote on February 5. In other words, Obama picked up the extra four delegates almost a month ago. Back then, blogger David Dayen was all over it at his blog Calitics. But none of the major media gurus like Todd bothered to notice until this past Monday when the Wall Street Journal column “Numbers Guy” cited Dayen’s reporting.

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