Nick Jimenez

Thursday, November 9, 2000

Learning how to count votes

In every election, it seems, there is a candidate who refuses to concede though the voting trends are pointing toward defeat.
   Inevitably, the candidate bravely says, "We won't know until the final vote is counted."
   From now on, I think, we'll pay more attention to those words.
   For those who stayed up late Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, George W. Bush was that candidate.
   The networks put the crucial 25 electoral votes for Florida in the win column for Vice President Al Gore in the middle of the evening.
   Then an amazing thing happened. What had been a sure thing became an unsure thing. Florida went back into the "too close to call" column.
   Then more amazing things happened.
   Early in the morning, Florida went into the Bush win column, and then by the time barn-yard roosters were clearing their throats, Florida was again too close to call.
   Now it looks like it will be sometime today before Americans know for sure who will be inaugurated next January. And you can't take that to the bank.
   Caught in the zigging and zagging were scores of headline writers who wrote the 2000 version of "Dewey Defeats Truman" and our editorial page that got caught zigging when the Florida vote count was zagging.
   How could such a thing happen?
   If headline writers are wringing their hands, I imagine that exit pollsters and TV executives who decided when to call states are agonizing today.
   With all their computers and all their experts, the huge media machine was left with no other recourse but to wait for the absolute last ballot to be counted, and recounted, in Florida.
   And it may not be the last time.
   Everywhere, it seems mailed-in ballots and absentee ballots played a huge role. Who do you interview for an exit poll when the vote is coming in the mailbag? Who is interviewed when the whole state is voting by mail, as occurred in Oregon?
   Though the Internet played a negligible role in this election, I expect that more Americans will vote in the future by pushing a few buttons on their desktop or their laptop. Who do the exit pollsters interview then?
   In Texas, absentee voting became early voting a few years ago. There is no longer any requirement that voters swear that they won't be able to present themselves on voting day. Voters can simply decide to cast their vote as early as two weeks before Election Day.
   How many voters might have switched their absentee or early votes based on a revelation made before the election that Bush had been arrested for DWI two decades ago? How many voters would have taken the revelation as dirty politics and switched their votes to Bush?
   If voters in Texas and elsewhere choose to cast more of their ballots by absentee or early ballots, the validity of exit polling gets softer.
   The entire national election seems like one huge jump back into the future, as if we were back in the days when election returns had to be reported by horseback from outlying precincts. Or in the exact situation that every county commissioner, constable or legislative candidate who doesn't have the benefit of pollsters faces: they must wait for every vote to be counted before they know who won.
   With some 50 million votes cast across the nation and the difference between the presidential contenders hanging on a few hundred votes, is there any question in anybody's mind now that every vote counts?
   (Nick Jimenez can be reached by phone at 886-3787 or by e-mail at jimenezn@caller.com.)
  

 
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