I asked this last time too...
With the US being over so many time zones, and with the exit polls and results from the East Coast having the potential to affect stuff on the West Coast and in Hawaii, why don't they just do the obvious thing, and have all polling stations open for the same 24 hours, so that in Maine it might be 5am Tuesday to 5am Wednesday, but in California it might be midnight Tuesday to midnight Wednesday or whatever. That way, all the polls would close at the same time, and results from one coast wouldn't influence those from the other.
5 comments:
Because that would be logical, and the government isn't capable of doing anything that remotely resembles logic.
The hours of opening are set by individual districts or precincts, not by the federal government or even by the state. The towns of Dixville Notch and Hart's Location, for example, declare their results before 1am on the day of the election, i.e. before pretty much everywhere else has voted.
I'd favour having the polling stations open at the normal times, but counting's not beginning till the same time across the US.
Also don't forget that many absentee votes don't even get counted until after the result has been declared!
There is also the perennial problem of exit polls influencing the judgement of late voters . . . .
Which is why publication of the results of exit polls is banned in the UK until after the polls close, IIRC...
"Widespread criticism of exit polling has occurred in cases, especially in the United States of America, where exit-poll results have appeared and/or have provided a basis for projecting winners before all real polls have closed, thereby possibly influencing election results[citation needed]. In the 1980 U.S. presidential election, NBC predicted a victory for Ronald Reagan at 8:15 pm EST, based on exit polls of 20,000 voters. It was 5:15 pm on the West Coast, and the polls were still open. There was speculation that voters stayed away after hearing the results. Thereafter, television networks voluntarily adopted a course of not projecting the presidential victor until after polls closed in the West, Hawaii and Alaska excluded[citation needed]. In the 2000 U.S. Presidential election it was alleged that media organizations released exit poll results for Florida before the polls closed in the Florida panhandle[citation needed].
Some countries, such as the United Kingdom or Germany, have made it a criminal offence to release exit poll figures before the polling stations have closed, while others, such as New Zealand and Singapore, have banned them altogether."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit_poll
Of course, exit polls can sometimes serve a useful purpose, of getting people out to vote that had wrongly assumed (until they heard the election poll) that things wouldn't be close.
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