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The Popular Vote and "But He Wasn't On the Ballot."

By wt

I know this sounds crazy, but I think Hillary is right about counting the popular vote.

By saying that, I mean two things:

(1) When she wants to persuade superdelegates to vote for her, she has a very defensible claim that they should consider the popular vote in making their decisions; and;

(2) The media should accurately report the popular vote without saying "if you include Michigan and Florida."

Rather, it should be report the story as "Hillary leads in the popular vote, unless, as the Obama campaign urges, Michigan and Florida's voters are excluded from the tally."

The argument that the popular vote means the number of people who have voted for a candidate is facially obvious. But there are two oft-repeated responses to this claim.

First, that the DNC ruled that Michigan and Florida's primaries are invalid. And second, that Obama "wasn't even on the ballot" in Michigan.

Both of these are terrible arguments.

To begin with, the DNC didn't hold Michigan or Florida's primaries "invalid." They ruled that the primaries violated DNC rules requiring primaries to be held on February 5th or after. Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina were also included in this.

But 4 of these states were allowed to keep their delegates. Ok, you can debate whether that's fair or not. But I'm avoiding that question entirely. The DNC's ruling had to do with *delegates,* not voters. It didn't strip Michigan or Florida of its people. Of course those votes should count in a casual tally of the popular vote.

Next, someone invariably exclaims that Obama "wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan." This is used as an argument *in favor* of Obama, when really, it strengthens Hillary's claim to the popular vote.

Obama chose to remove himself from the Michigan ballot to curry favor with the me-first voters in the 4 early states. That was a good strategy. He won Iowa. He crushed in South Carolina.

But arguing that Clinton can't count *her* votes because Obama wasn't on the ballot is a non sequitor.

Obama received zero votes in Michigan. Neither did I. Or any of the other authors of this blog. But Hillary received hundreds of thousands.

To be honest, I haven't been on *any* ballots this primary season. But that doesn't mean Hillary isn't beating me, personally, in the popular vote count.

One last point about the popular vote. It's entirely irrelevant to actual delegate counts. Pledged delegates are allocated by state, not popular vote. And superdelegates can vote on whatever criteria they want. But given these caveats, points (1) and (2) above, I think, are fairly obvious.

Full post as published by Expressio Unius on May 03, 2008 (boomark / email).