I’ve been at our family fishing camp for almost a month: no road, no papers, no TV, no internet, no social media, no telephone.
Obviously, I’m out of touch with the latest pratfalls of the news media, but hours spent fishing for dinner offered time to think. Here is an idea that stuck:
More than ever, the urgency with which news media report election “results” pits voting rights against free speech/press during presidential elections. In this quadrennial brawl, voters lose — think California.
In the Lower 48, we have four time zones: Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific. There is a three-hour difference between, say, New York and San Francisco.
When news media report exit polls and final state tallies in the Eastern time zone, folks west of Indiana are still deciding whether to vote and for whom. It would be naive to believe that no one cares whether someone “calls” a state for one presidential candidate or another.
Even in a landslide, if early returns discourage potential presidential voters, candidates for other offices could lose votes they deserve. Attention to the presidential race is understandable, but every member of Congress and one-third of the Senate are on the ballot.
This isn’t a new problem. It has only gotten worse as most Americans rely on TV for their news and the internet has become omnipresent.
Twenty-three years ago, The New York Times said, “Polls of voters leaving voting places, a research method originally devised in part to help reporters understand questions of public policy, have become a public policy question themselves, largely because of the competitive pressures of television. Politicians and civic groups contend that television broadcasts before voting places close, predicting voting results on the basis of these exit polls, affect the outcome of elections by persuading citizens that the election is effectively over and their ballots are meaningless.”
I went online and found no national studies on the impact of early results on voting, nor could I find any consideration among national media about the risk of depressing votes in states where polls still were open.
Only an agreement among some national news media prevents them from revealing state exit surveys or voter tallies before that state’s polls close.
This is where voting rights collide with First Amendment protections for the news media. Prior restraint — where the government says, “You can’t say that” — would never pass the constitutional sniff test.
The latest attempt at voluntary restraint came after a royal mess in the 2000 presidential election. Of course, it involved Florida.
ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox and the Associated Press had created the Voter News Service for accurate, fast information in presidential elections.
In 2000, VNS called Florida for Al Gore. Then George Bush. Then Too Close to Call.
Also, Florida votes in two time zones and polls were open in the Panhandle while the state was being awarded to Gore, Bush and Too Close to Call. With that, VNS was as dead as a hanging chad.
For the 2004 election, the same news media created the National Election Pool. It appeared to work in the 2004, 2008 and 2012 presidential elections.
AP collects and reports voter counts.
Edison Research conducts exit polling for the National Election Pool. Joe Lenski, executive vice president at Edison, explained it this way in an email:
“These news organizations have made a public pledge to Congress that they will not use any exit poll results to project or characterize the winner in an election until all polls in that state have closed … All of our exit poll data is ‘quarantined’ until 5 p.m. (Eastern Standard Time) on election day.
“That means that until then only a small number of representatives of each of the news organizations have access to the exit poll data in a room where there is no communication allowed with the outside world — no phones, no cellphones, no connection to the internet, etc. After 5 p.m. (Eastern Standard Time) the exit poll data is released to the news organizations and they are allowed to report exit poll results that do not characterize the outcome of the race — for example, what is the most important issue facing the country today? — until all of the polls in that state have closed.
“You are correct that the many academic studies that have been conducted about the effect of reported exit poll results have been inconclusive.
“While it is possible for late voters in the Pacific Time Zone to have access to exit poll results before they go to the polls, the number of voters affected is very limited. Many western states conduct all of their voting by mail — Colorado, Oregon and Washington — and many other western states have a high proportion of votes cast by mail before election — Arizona, California, Nevada and New Mexico now cast more than half of their votes before election.
“Thus, the percentage of western voters who have not cast their ballot before the polls start closing in the rest of the country is relatively small.”
In short, risk of voter suppression remains a national problem, at least for Americans who believe that voter participation is a good thing and that it’s already dangerously low.
Brits are addressing the national issues, but their solution would run afoul of our First Amendment. They use the law to gag the news media throughout election day until all polls close.
For almost 22 hours, reporters can describe the weather, how voters dress, which politicians voted where, etc., but nothing about the votes or issues. This from BBC’s website:
“Coverage is restricted to uncontroversial factual accounts, such as the appearance of politicians and others at polling stations or the weather.
“Publishing information setting out the practicalities involved in helping people to vote, such as when the polls are open, the wording of the question, expectations of when the result may be known, etc. are allowed, but the BBC stops short of actually encouraging people to vote.
“While the polls are open, it is a criminal offence for anyone, not just broadcasters, to publish anything about the way in which people have voted in the referendum, where that is based on information given by voters after they have voted.
“That includes, of course, anything emerging from exit polls (which, by definition, are asking people how they actually voted), although the broadcasters themselves have not commissioned any exit polls for this vote.
“In addition, no opinion poll on any issue relating to the referendum can be published by broadcasters until after the polls have closed.”
CONTACT BEN L. KAUFMAN: letters@citybeat.com
This article appears in Aug 31 – Sep 7, 2016.
