Since the Clinton campaign wants to count unsanctioned contests and include their votes into the popular vote tally ("I've gotten the most votes ever!"), here are a couple more unsanctioned contests that could be thrown into the tally:
Those are all from non-binding primaries conducted in those caucus states. Combined, they'd add 46,547 votes for Obama if we were stupid enough to think that votes that don't matter actually count.
But that's not all the votes that were cast for either Obama or Clinton this year. There's the Texas caucuses, which aren't counted in any popular vote tallies. But since every vote matters to Clinton, and she's claiming that she's gotten more votes cast for her than any other Democrat in a primary, then of course we have to be intellectually consistent and, well, count every vote.
There are no official tallies of caucus turnout, but estimates range from 900,000 to 1.2 million. Let's be nice and go with the lower estimate, 900K. Based on sign-in sheets at caucus sites, turnout for the caucuses was roughly 750,000. Obama won the caucuses 56-44. That 12-point spread is another 90,000-vote gain for Obama.
That means that tallying EVERY single contest this cycle, even the ones that didn't count (since that's the Clinton standard), gives Obama an extra 136,547 votes.
Now let's look at the popular vote tally if Michigan, Florida, and the caucus states are counted (and remember, this is with Obama getting zero votes in Michigan): Clinton has a 54,432-vote advantage.
Now let's roll in the vote totals from every other contest that didn't matter, and we now have a 82,115-vote Obama advantage.
So while Clinton may claim she's gotten more votes than Obama this year, fact is, that's not true under any scenario unless you start excluding elections.
This post is absurd, of course -- there's no reason to count the votes of non-binding contests that had no bearing on the delegate selection process, and it's sketchy at best to double count Texas voters participating in their two binding contests. Still, this post is the logical extension of the Clinton argument.
If you're going to count every vote cast this primary cycle, even those of contests that didn't count, then you count every single vote cast, including those of every contest that didn't count.
Update: Burnt Orange Report will release a revised tally of the Texas caucuses later today based on sign-in sheets, that will peg caucus turnout at around 750,000 voters. I've updated the numbers in this post accordingly.
The manipulation of language is always a tricky thing. It's usually done with vagueness & imprecise words that are intended to make things "better." But when you start creating a world where people are obscure in saying what they mean, it makes it that much easier for people to not mean what they say, or deal & talk about the underlying problems the vague words are meant to mask. Whether the motivations or intentions are good ones is a matter of perspective, but what about when it's done in the name of fairness?
