The Clintonian "Popular Vote" Sham

by CA Pol Junkie

Senator Clinton doesn't have alot in her favor to argue she should be the Democratic nominee for president, so she has been touting what she calls the "popular vote" lately:

Barack Obama could tip the pledged delegate scale permanently in his favor today. But in an interview on WKYQ Tuesday morning, Hillary Clinton insisted this battle isn't over. "Right now, I lead in the popular vote, which is a very important indicator," she said.

To be blunt, we should expect better from Senator Clinton as this undermines a very important issue Democrats have championed. Democrats have been strong supporters of voting rights since the 1960's. We learned in 2000, however, that our job wasn't done. The voting equipment was causing significant error in translating the voters' will to election results. Although politicization of the Florida Secretary of State and United States Supreme Court played a fundamental role in the selection of George W. Bush, the inequities of the voting systems played a key role as well.

We saw it again in Ohio in 2004, with antiquated voting equipment rejecting high numbers of Democratic votes. Democrats raised hell again and demanded reform. While no election will be perfect, we were right to demand an end to arbitrary errors which favored one party over the other. That is what makes Senator Clinton's "popular vote" especially aggravating.

There are many fundamental reasons why the Clintonian primary "popular vote" is a sham. The first is the inequities of voting systems. This isn't just the couple percent error between punch cards and optical scanning with error checking. Caucuses have a fraction of the turnout of primaries because it is a very cumbersome voting method. For example, the population of New Hampshire is almost exactly the same as that of Maine, but the turnout for the New Hampshire primary was 6.5 times that of the Maine caucus. Is it reasonable to equate the two popular votes even though the effect of the voting system on the result is overwhelming? Hell no. That's why we have delegates in proportion to Democratic presidential voters.

Then there's Florida and Michigan. The DNC and all the candidates (including Clinton) agreed before the primaries that those states would get zero delegates. Now they're supposed to retroactively count after campaigning was forbidden? How convenient for Senator Clinton. For the popular vote to have any meaning, the voters and candidates need to know what the stakes are before the vote. You have to allow campaigning so as to not give the well-known establishment candidate a huge advantage. The retroactive inclusion of those states by Clinton is arbitrary, not democratic. It's a shame for the voters in those states that they are irrelevant, but normally about 45 states are irrelevant so it's a little hard to invoke more than faux outrage.

It is absolutely understandable that Senator Clinton and her supporters would look for any opportunity to win the nomination, but is the "popular vote" really worth the cost? It is ironic that, even after shredding both democratic and Democratic principles, the Clintonian "popular vote" argument is one part embarrassing, one part pointless and one part destructive. It is embarrassing because of the convolutions needed to create a scenario favorable to Senator Clinton. It insults the intelligence of the super delegates to suggest they would be persuaded. The "popular vote" is pointless because it doesn't increase the chance that Barack Obama will be hit by a meteor, which at this point is Clinton's most likely route to the nomination. It is destructive not only because it attacks the belief in voting equality at the core of the Democratic Party but because it seeks to undermine the legitimacy of Barack Obama's nomination. The Democratic Party should stand up for its principles and our presumptive nominee by rejecting and denouncing Clinton's "popular vote".