I am interested to see what info 'twisted' gets from the CA lottery commission.
As far as I can tell from the CA Lotto website, the annuity is paid out in equal payments, not like the graduated payment structure of CA SLP. So theoretically then, the cash value should be more since the amount invested must return enough to cover the equal value payments. I ran some calculations in Excel to verify the cash value necessary to return an equal payment over 26 years and there is no way for CA to get a large enough return to cover the annual payments if they are only investing 40-50% of the jackpot into 10-year US Treasury Notes (~4% return). They must invest the ~62% cash value reported on USA Mega.
But, if CA invests a smaller amount at a higher rate of return (though likely with more risk), then it would be possible to meet the promised 26 equal payments. Though I think this scenario is unlikely.
So...I am still curious to see what info anyone can find out.