By Mark Rhoads –
Late Saturday night, the chair of the Maine Republican Party announced that Ted Cruz had won the state caucus by a wide margin and yet a news site stated "but the state still has not been called for Cruz by Associated Press."
Think about the irony of that statement. The official counters in the state has finished their tally of votes but a news site cautioned the results were not "official" until so declared by AP? Who is AP to call anything?
AP is not an election authority in any state, it is only a wire service. All major news networks in 2000 covered themselves in egg on the face when they first "called" Florida for Al Gore before the polls were closed in the panhandle and then took it back and then "called" the state for Gov. George W. Bush and then called that back very late at night all in the space of a few hours. After 2000, one might think it would be reasonable for news networks to be less arrogant about their role in reporting results on election night.
But no, they learned nothing at all from 2000 and continue to pretend that they are the official arbiters of declaring winners and the county clerks and state election authorities are just an after thought. Because networks want to beat their competitors with the latest news they often get their calls wrong by using exit polls instead of real vote results to make a projecton.
This often causes a distortion across time zones. The early concession of Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan in 1980 very likley hurt Democratic candidates down the ballot in the west and the opposite happened in 2000 when the early Florida call for Gore hurt GOP down ballot candidates in California.
It is time for news media to get their clumsy thumb off the scale and stop spinning exit polls and early results in an effort to slant a story one way or another. Even if it means the public will not know results until the next day, a federal law is needed to ensure no results are broadcast until all the polls close in all states.
