Quick Election Thoughts (Warning: Information Value Nearly Nil)

I’ve looked around the internet and must report that there is absolutely no election information of any value out there at the moment.

Personally, I blame Jimmy Carter for this. Liberals (who always have a hard time dealing with the rejection of their ideas) convinced themselves that the Republican landslide in 1980 was the result of their voters becoming discouraged because the networks had used exit-poll data to declare that “Reagan Wins” in the early afternoon while voting was still going on. People of my age or older will back me up on this. This traumatic experience led liberal newsrooms to institutionally internalize the idea that early release of exit poll data was bad.

Why not count absentee ballots before election day, as they come in? Then, we’d get (pre-recount and pre-litigation) final results of close races a lot more quickly.

I’m not a return all-the-way to paper ballots guy, but I like the optical scan technology we use here in RI that leaves a physical audit trail. I don’t think going to a purely electronic touch-screen system will ever be a good idea.

Stay tuned. Rhode Island polls close at 9:00.