Clinton's popular vote claim disenfranchises Michigan voters [View All]

Clinton has been claiming that she is ahead in the popular vote, a claim that is problematic if not outright misleading, because she is counting her votes from Michigan and counting 0 for Obama. Regardless of whether or not Obama was following the rules by taking his name off or just pandering to Iowa and New Hampshire (there is some debate about the meaning of the word "participate" in the pledge the candidates signed), the bottom line is, if you are concerned about giving the people of Michigan a voice in the process, it's kind of hard to argue that a result that gives Obama 0 votes is representative of the people of Michigan. I know at least 2 people in Michigan who wanted to vote for Obama, and they would not be represented if you gave him 0 votes. If Clinton is really committed to giving Michigan a voice, then she can't argue that giving Obama 0 votes is representative.

So I came up with a formula for allocating the popular vote. It's imperfect and probably underestimates Obama's support, since some of his supporters probably did not vote or voted in the Republican primary because he was not on the ballot. We should note that a poll taken when a revote looked possible showed them tied. But in the interest of figuring out some way to use the results from the Jan. 15 primary, here's what I came up with:

According to the exit polls, if all the candidates were on the ballot, Clinton would have gotten 46%, Obama would have gotten 35%, and Edwards would have gotten 12%. So I multiplied those percentages by the total vote #, and got 273,423 votes for Clinton and 208,039 for Obama. This nets Clinton 65,384 votes. The reason this vote total is lower than her actual total is because 18% of those who voted for Clinton said they would have voted for Obama if he had been on the ballot.

If you give the candidates these vote #'s, Obama still leads narrowly in the popular vote. He would lead by about 85,000 with Florida counted, and 180,000 with Florida counted and the estimates from the 4 caucus states included. It's possible that Clinton could pull ahead after Puerto Rico, but are we really going to argue that she should become the nominee because she took the lead in the popular vote after winning votes from people who aren't even US citizens and can't vote in November?

Yes, Michigan broke the rules, and Clinton said herself that it would not count. I am not saying whether it should or shouldn't. The point I am trying to make is that at a minimum, 238,000 people would have voted for Obama, and Clinton, the so-called champion of voter rights for Michigan, is disenfranchising those people when she claims a lead in the popular vote and gives Obama 0 votes from Michigan.