The Hysterical Rush to Deregulate

Why did the television networks make so many mistakes calling the election? Let’s go back a few years in history. In 1986 then President Reagan ordered an overhaul of Federal Communication Commission rules. The big networks were testifying before congress that they wanted more freedom to decide the content of their programming and to make other cost cutting changes. One of the first rules to go was the “equal time amendment” which called for all sides of a political position to be aired. Another cost cutting measure was to pool network resources when reporting national elections. In 1989 all the networks contracted with the Voter News Service (VNS) to do their exit polling. The subscription fee for all the major networks was a paltry $17 million saving each network millions of dollars.

Prior to election day and based upon carefully constructed statistical models of the voting population, VNS identifed a representative sample of precincts within a voting population. On election day VNS stations trained exit pollers in front of the representative precinct to ask voters about their choices. In Palm Beach County, Florida, for example, 45 precincts had exit pollers. Precinct data are later compared to the actual on going vote counts to make sure the information from the two sources of vote data are consistent with each other. Based on these initial exit data from Palm Beach County and elsewhere in Florida, Gore was winning by a large enough margin in Democratic strongholds so that the networks felt comfortable in calling Florida for Gore. Then VNS noticed in Palm Beach these exit data were inconsistent with the on going voter count. VNS then recommended to the networks that Florida was “too close to call.” At this point VNS brought on line some statistical adjustments taking into account their discovery that the voters were B.S.’ing the exit pollers. When the BS factor was applied to other precincts, VNS declared Bush the winner in Florida. Then VNS discovered the voters were confused by the butterfly ballot and were not BS’ing the exit pollers. The voters thought they voted for Gore and reported truthfully to the exit pollers but were instead voting for Buchanan. Again VNS reversed itself and declared Florida was “too close to call.”

As of this writing who will be President of the United States has not been decided. Whoever becomes President, will preside over a country so noisily and loudly divided that it will become impossible over the next two years to produce any meaningful legislation that will help the broad masses of middle class and working class people. On the other hand, the fat cats already have their lawyers and accountants on retainer geared up to take advantage of the coming rule changes and rule deletions which will quietly coast through a bought and paid for government.

In the hysterical rush to deregulate American society, America has been reduced to a poker game where there are no betting limits. In such a poker game, it does not matter how many aces the middle and working class have in their hands, because the fat cat at the end of the table will always bet and raise them out of the game.


November 2000