GREAT MOMENTS IN FATUOUS JOURNALISM

Lifted wholesale from Sam Smith's Undernews

Howard Kurtz would have you believe that the big problem with our elections is not ballot boxes that can be rigged but bad exit polling -- SS

HOWARD KURTZ, WASHINGTON POST - If the Democrats capture the House, television anchors won't be able to project that until they are sure the party has locked in a 15-seat gain. . . In the Senate, with fewer seats in play, the math is simpler. If one or two of the most vulnerable Republicans -- in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Missouri -- win decisively, the networks will know fairly early that the Democrats won't be able to reach their magic number of six needed to take control. But even if the Democrats sweep those races -- and hold New Jersey, which is in doubt -- the networks still won't be able to forecast a Democratic takeover until enough votes are counted in Montana, where polls close at 10 p.m. Eastern. . .

The biggest behind-the-scenes change in network coverage involves what has been dubbed the Quarantine Room. Determined to avoid a rerun of recent years, when its exit polls leaked out by early afternoon to the Drudge Report, Slate and other Web sites, a media consortium is allowing two people from each of the networks and the Associated Press entree to a windowless room in New York. All cell phones, laptops and Blackberrys will be confiscated. The designated staffers will pore over the exit polls but will not be allowed to communicate with their offices until 5 p.m.

The consortium, called the National Election Pool, is conducting no surveys for House races. The exit polling will take place for Senate and gubernatorial contests in 32 states with competitive races.

The recent track record with such polling has been pockmarked with failure. There was, of course, the debacle of election night 2000, when the networks used polling data from Florida to prematurely award the presidency, twice, within hours. In 2002, the network consortium's predecessor, Voter News Service, suffered a computer meltdown and pulled the plug on its exit polls. Two years ago, its sample was so skewed that the group's surveys showed Sen. John Kerry beating President Bush well into the night.

WaPo Article...