I think that that one person that he meant whose death is a tragedy is his own. He didn't care about the other people- not even his own people. However, there is a simple truth to the quote that some people think of many massacres as just statistics of history, but the death of their loved ones as catastrophes.

The quote can be true because the people who count the votes can lie about the votes, but nowadays, there are usually more than one person who counts the votes, so it would be unusual for them to lie.