[DrJJWMac]

I support your idea and would also argue the badge count should intelligently account for groups that are marked as complete with last task or not. The former should show one less than the latter.

In the meantime, I've taken mostly to ignore the badge count as a reliable representation of how many tasks I have in line because it is partially ambiguous for your reasons and for the one above. I use it only as a flag to say -- something is (possibly) here to do. Perhaps some day I'll figure out how to make it consistently useful in my workflow ... which is unfortunate since it is supposed to be a useful feature.