House Backs Uniform Poll Closing in National Races

The House, responding to concerns that television reports of East Coast election returns have influenced voting in Western states, on Wednesday approved legislation to create a uniform poll closing time for presidential elections.

The bill was approved in a 238-154 vote. It now goes to the Senate, which has twice failed to act on similar legislation. But sponsors said its prospects have improved because key senators have promised to bring the measure up for a vote sometime this year.

House members of both political parties spoke in favor of the legislation, saying it would ensure that voters in Western states are not discouraged from participating in elections after seeing projections from states where polls have already closed. California Gov. George Deukmejian and other Western governors have endorsed the measure.

“With this bill, we’re saying to West Coast voters that your votes count just as much as those in other parts of the country,” Rep. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said. Without a uniform poll closing time, he said, “the importance of Western votes for President could be diminished just because of where we live.”

But critics said the bill was unnecessary, arguing that no hard proof exists that election results in Western states have been affected by projections from the East Coast.

“Nobody’s shown this to be the case at all,” Rep. Bill Frenzel (R-Minn.) said. “This is reform without reason, a solution in search of a problem. The only time the federal government should be messing around with election laws is when voters are actually being disenfranchised, and this is not one of those times.”

The poll closing issue surfaced in the 1980 presidential election when television networks predicted the defeat of President Jimmy Carter several hours before polls closed on the West Coast. In California and other Western states, some elected officials believe that those news reports affected the outcome of state and local contests by causing large numbers of potential voters to stay home.

Last November, the major television networks refrained from declaring a winner before all polls had closed, but they hinted at the broad dimensions of President Bush’s victory more than 90 minutes before polls closed in California.

Much of television’s ability to predict elections reflects its reliance on sophisticated exit polls, conducted as voters leave voting booths. Rep. William M. Thomas (R-Bakersfield), one of the sponsors of the uniform poll closing bill, said it is time for Congress to adopt a response to exit polling technology.

“It’s clear that these television polling techniques could predict results even in close elections; not just in landslides, but in a 52%-48% race,” Thomas said. “If we don’t pass a poll closing bill now, we’re going to have to make that kind of a change later on.”

Closing Times

Under the proposal, polls would close at 9 p.m. on the East Coast, 8 p.m. in the Central time zone and 7 p.m. in the Mountain states.

On the West Coast, daylight-saving time would be extended for an additional two weeks in presidential election years, enabling polls to close at 7 p.m. PDT, which corresponds to the closing time in the standard time zones. The bill does not address when polls open, and it has no effect on Alaska and Hawaii.

Sponsors said they had considered a number of options, including holding the presidential election over a 24-hour period, scheduling the election on a Sunday, opening polls earlier across the nation and closing them later in the East.

“All things considered, I think this was the best compromise,” Wyden said. “It’s the least intrusive plan we could develop.”