Election mess fallout may benefit Hawai'i

It is hard to understand precisely where a U.S. House committee was headed with its hearing this week on the miscalling of the fall presidential election by the television networks.

Yes, the miscues and retractions were an embarrassment. But it is difficult to see what Congress could, or should, do about it. After all, this is a fairly direct First Amendment issue.

Still, the networks suffered enough credibility hits to keep them from complaining too loudly. They promised reforms that should lessen the chance of serious mistakes next time.

They promised not to use exit polls to call results in close elections and they said they would work to create better forms of exit polling analysis. Good.

They also promised not to report results until all polls in a state are closed. That’s long overdue. Hawai‘i, particularly, has been the victim of early reporting of results.

Not only do we have to go to the polls after the networks have declared winners and losers, we frequently are still voting when the networks declare Hawai‘i. This happened again last fall, when Hawaii was put into the Gore column well before polls closed here.

So some good may come of this. One of the more intriguing ideas broached at the congressional hearing was for a national poll closing time — the "24-hour" idea that has been discussed in the past. This would have definite benefits for Island voters, who would then have the same poll hours as their fellow citizens.

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