Re: Considering last night's debacle in Florida..............................................................

["Bob Nelson...WMWM" <bobonradio@yahoo.com>]

I would hope that would be the case... They reported
how Florida was going while the polls were still open
in part of the state (the panhandle, which is in the
Central Time Zone).

Of course, networks want to boast about being the
first to "call" a state. I would think the secratery
of state of each state would only "call" a state for
a candidate once all the votes were counted. Keep
in mind what the networks are doing are exit poll
predictions which are not always accurate, though
they tend to be. (But who knows if people are 
telling the truth?) And people should remember that
these are _predictions_, no different that hearing
on the 11 pm news that it will be rainy all day
tomorrow and it turns out to be partly to mostly
sunny instead.

Again, these are predictions, not facts. At one point
they predicted Hillary Clinton winning New York
(and she did) even though the TV screen showed Lazio
leading in the "actual" vote tally at that moment.
There's predictions and then there's "hard numbers".
They were saying on WRKO last night that several
states were said to
be in the Dukakis column in 1988 but the next day
when all the votes were counted, Bush Sr. had won
them.

And if you have the possibility of these exit polls
actually influencing an election, that's something
to worry about (picture people in California seeing
how things are going elsewhere; they figure, "why
bother voting--my candidate will win/lose in the end
anyway", and their failure to vote could influence
local races and ballot questions, etc.)

--- Mike_Ed <Mike_Ed@email.msn.com> wrote:
> don't you think that after all the dust gets settled
> and either Bush or Gore
> gets into office, that the networks will change in
> 2004 how they report the
> election on election night? 

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