IS 61 MILLION BIGGER THAN 60 MILLION? OPINIONS DIFFER!

At this moment, CNN reports that Hillary Clinton's vote total in the presidential election is 61,039,676. Donald Trump's is 60,371,193. While it won't change the electoral-vote outcome, Clinton's popular-vote lead, as The Atlantic notes, is certain to grow:

State officials are still counting millions of provisional and absentee ballots, and within two weeks, Clinton will likely have another few million votes in the bank.

Most were cast in the Clinton-leaning states of California, Washington, and New York....

“We probably have about 7 million votes left to count,” said David Wasserman, an editor at Cook Political Report who is tracking turnout. “A majority of them are on the coasts, in New York, California, and Washington. She should be able to win those votes, probably 2-1.” By mid-December, when the Electoral College officially casts its ballots, Wasserman estimates that Clinton could be ahead by 2 percentage points in the popular vote.

This is a fact -- but, if you don't like this fact, right-wingers have a totally different set of facts. On the right, the Clinton popular-vote lead is just another lie from the lie-beral media:

Final #Election2016 Results By Numbers:-
#PopularVote
#electoralvotes pic.twitter.com/uKZevQvPfK

— Michael (@Koxinga8) November 12, 2016

This "fact" is affirmed by a number of "news" sites you've probably never heard of. Here's what Prntly has to say on the subject:

Sorry liberals, Trump just won the popular vote and electoral vote after the recounts

Hillary Clinton lost both the electoral college AND the popular vote now that the official recounts and numbers are in from Michigan and Arizona....

But how can this be? Hillary has 200,000 more votes right now?

Not all the states have tallied their votes. In Utah, Ohio, and North Carolina, almost 25% of the votes remain uncounted. These are all states in which Trump won overwhelmingly, Ohio +9%, Utah +20%, NC +4%

This isn't true -- in fact, hardly anything at Prntly is true, as The Washington Post reported last April -- but the assertion certainly is made with a lot of confidence.

Here's another confident assertion, from 100PercentFedUp:

She may win the number of votes counted, but not the votes cast.

States don’t count their absentee ballots unless the number of outstanding absentee ballots is larger than the state margin of difference. If there is a margin of 1,000 votes counted and there are 1,300 absentee ballots outstanding, then the state tabulates those. If the number of outstanding absentee ballots wouldn’t influence the election results, then the absentee ballots aren’t counted.

Who votes by absentee ballot? Students overseas, the military, businesspeople on trips, etc. The historical breakout for absentee ballots is about 67-33% Republican.

On this subject, Snopes quotes an April post from Vote.org:

Are absentee ballots counted?

Yes, all votes are counted, whether they're cast in-person or by absentee ballot.

It is a common misconception that absentee ballots are only counted during very tight races. This misconception stems from two things: one, absentee ballots are often counted for days after the election since many are coming from abroad; two, absentee ballots are often a small percentage of all voted ballots. Many elections have a clear winner, so the absentee ballots that are still being counted after election night don't affect the results as predicted right after the polls close.

Clinton will win the popular vote ... yet some right-wingers will continue to say that she didn't, forever. Because if the lamestream media says one integer is larger than another, it's obviously a lie, right?

*****

UPDATE: What kind of idiot would you have to be to fall for this? This kind of idiot:

Ok can we get you to move to the next fake crisis? 62.9m to 62.2m trump won pop vote and 306 to 232 electoral. Move on to your next slight

— Curt Schilling (@gehrig38) November 12, 2016

(H/t: Charlie Pierce.)