CNN Skewed Election

One nice thing about being in the East during Election Day is the greater drama of watching the election results come in after the polls have closed.

When I was in high school in Idaho, my parents and I would come in from our day, look at the TV, find out who had essentially won the election. Then my parents would go vote.

I couldn't prove it, but I suspect that knowing their vote really didn't matter changed the way my parents cast their ballot at least once.

It's one thing to have the presidential race called early, when the majority of states have voted. It's tremendously unfair to those beyond the Central Time Zone and shows a tremendous amount of disregard for Alaska and Hawaii. Still, the national media does have an argument; most of the votes have been counted by the time they declare.

Last night, though, the national media went beyond unfair and became recklessly irresponsible.

When CNN announced that the Senate incumbent in my home state of Idaho had won, not a single vote had been reported. Adding insult to injury, half of the polls in the state were open--and would be for another hour.

This is not the first time the national media has called races before the polls closed: they called the Governor's race in 1990, and I'm sure many others I don't remember. When faced with this situation, it is tradition for the candidates to vocally disregard the reports.

After the CNN report, the two would-be Senators immediately went on television to plead with Idahoans to ignore the calling of the race, repeating over and over that not a single vote had been counted and it was completely without basis. Both said they would file a complaint the next day, whoever won the race.

But the damage was already done.

Voters in North Idaho, which is part of the Pacific Time Zone, were crucial in both the Senate and the House election. Descendents of miners and loggers--union laborers who voted Democratic--the people remain highly dependent on natural resource industries for their living, creating some rightward-leanings.

Which part of the ballot these voters would end up punching was anybody's guess. The monkey-wrench CNN tossed in last night didn't help matters at all.

The returns which came in last night from North Idaho showed that CNN's choice did much worse in that part of the state than he did in the others.

This could mean a couple of things. What it might mean is that the other candidate would have won if the media hadn't discouraged other supporters by prematurely calling the race.

It could also mean that North Idahoans got so mad at CNN they decided to go vote out of spite, increasing the turnout. Since Idahoans are often an ornery bunch, this explanation is as likely as the first.

And lastly, it is possible CNN had no effect at all, and people voted the same way they had been planning to.

Election observers may thank CNN for providing so many alternatives and such interesting twists to what could have been a straightforward--and so much less interesting--election analysis.

However, the people of Idaho have a tougher time finding the silver lining. Ultimately, by calling the race before people had even finished voting, the national press improperly interfered with this process.

Calling an election with polls open should be illegal. If one ever gets on the state ballot, I'll be sure to vote for it. The people of Idaho wouldn't even need CNN to tell them it was a landslide in the voters' favor.

Valerie J. MacMillan's column appears on alternate Thursdays.