Exit Polls are an abomination because they are incomplete and inaccurate. You can't blame a couple of guys hanging out near a voting area saying, "Hey buddy, who'd you vote for? who? hey, you! come back here!" Every vote that takes place should, as it happens, be immediately reported to the public via the internet and all the public media. Zap, up on the FEC site or DNC site etc., whoever is sponsoring the election. Every 15 minutes you get vote totals no more than 15 minutes old from when the polls open to when they close.
That's right, I long for the day of yore when they reported election returns as they came in by the box only even better with high tech response times. I swear I remember those old days but it's so distant now I might have just dreamed it.
What would have happened if it went down to the wire in 2000, and everyone had known 30 minutes before the polls closed exactly how close it was right then? I think it would lead to incredible turnout.
The 24 Hour Campaign
Keep the election halls open 24 hours and tell people what's going on. The candidates will stay up 24 hours doing GOTV because it might do some good. If your guy is behind, you call up grandma and tell her to get out of the bath because it's closer than you thought! You can't blame grandma for wanting to stay in in the first place, she's 93! She thart it was gonna be a blow out. It will make the election exciting and worthwhile.
Now if it's mathematically impossible to win, well, that's that. Even Brokaw can call it in good conscience. But if you keep the polls open long enough it can be synchronized so the polls close nationally at the same real time. People on the east coast still will generally vote earlier than west coast resident, but west coast people will get to make the more final decision in closer races, but in really close races like 2000 people would have flooded out at the last minute to vote.
With a Midnight to Midnight period EST, that would just be the 3am to 3am period for PST and across the nation you'd have people down there voting in the wee hours of the morning to reach the tipping point. A detail: If you get to the polls on time, they have to process you, so the polls need a couple extra hours in case they need to let people vote who showed up on time. With rules like these and the current voter turnout, you could change elections in the last few minutes.
Imagine if people in all the states could have known what was going on, if they had known when there was an hour left and it was so damn close in 2000? Everyone would have wanted in on that.
Who do you suppose would have won in that case?
If in the 2000 election we had immediate reporting of votes more or less as they were cast, I assume a lot more people would have come out to vote in the last few hours or even the last 30 minutes.
POLL: How would that have changed the 2000 election?