Originally published at OpEdNews.com

The claim that Hillary is winning the popular vote is one of the most deceptive, specious claims the Hillary Clinton campaign and her surrogates are making. The mainstream media is echoing and giving a total pass on this egregiously dishonest claim.

This is very important for several reasons.

1- Superdelegates are arguing that they are, by supporting Hillary, representing the majority of voters. The truth is that this not true.

2- The mainstream media repeat the "Hillary is winning the popular vote" mantra, or allow Hillary and her surrogates to make the specious claim many many times every day.

Actually, the claim is an affront to the truth, based on the numbers.

The truth is that caucus states don't have a popular vote. That doesn't make their vote less important. It just changes how the people of that state choose to make the decision on who to select in the primary.

Most people making claims about Hillary's popular vote advantage talk about her having around a three million vote lead. I went to the 2016 Democratic Popular Vote page on RealClearPolitics. The page, not including West Virginia, shows Hillary with a 3,135,834 lead.

Then I took a list of the caucus states that Bernie has won, and he's won almost all of them.

I dug up 2015 census data on the populations of those states and then pulled from Real Clear Politics, the total votes and the winning spread for Sanders in the caucus states. The numbers are below. First observation-- for states totaling roughly 35 million people, some which Bernie won by 70%, he is given a total spread advantage of 160,000 votes. That's outrageous.

Caucus states:

2015 populations according to wikipedia

Take a close look at Washington state, which Bernie won with 72.7% of the votes. RealClearPolitics gives him zero votes, with its 7.2 million population.

The same goes for Maine, where Bernie had a 29% spread and Alaska where he won over 81% of the vote. Zero. Zilch. Nada. In Wyoming, Bernie is given 32 votes, not 32,000. He is given 32 votes.

It's ridiculous. But it's not ridiculous that Clinton claims she has a three million popular vote lead. It's an intentional, obscenely misleading, dishonest claim.

When a super delegate claims he or she is representing the will of the majority, basing it on the three million lead popular vote, it's based on a lie. Challenge that superdelegate.

When a journalist on a news network allows Hillary Clinton, her campaign manager or any of her many surrogates, employed by the networks or independent, to matter-of-factly state that Hillary has a popular vote lead, without challenging that claim, they are engaging in unethical, journalistic malpractice, or, framed another way, they are promoting the Hillary Clinton campaign.

If you observe the MSM engaging in this practice, call them on it. Tweet or share on Facebook the name of the "journalist" who gave the "pass." Include the network's twitter address and the journalist's twitter @address. Make a stink about this.

This is a lie that should not be accepted, tolerated or allowed to persist.

This is a follow-up to my article, published April 1, 2016, Hillary's Disingenuous Claim That She's Won 2.5 Million More Votes is Bogus. Here's why