Jack, sign the petition: Traditional media cannot make premature calls on Election Night. They must wait for accurate and complete results.
Sign the petition
Any election results reported on November 3 will be incomplete and inaccurate. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, an unprecedented percentage of the ballots will be cast by mail, which will take longer to count.
Donald Trump’s campaign is already making contingency plans to steal this election. If initial returns show Trump leading, there is a real danger that he will declare victory, and work with Republican allies in key states to crack down on late vote counting. The chaos this could sow is difficult to imagine.
The traditional media has an obligation to prevent this disaster. Sign the petition: No premature calls on Election Night, exit poll results, big boards, etc. We must have accurate and complete results.
Sign the petition
The press outlets need to decide now that they won't give Trump any ammunition based on incomplete returns, and they need to start explaining that now, setting expectations with the public about how they will report this election. Donald Trump cannot be given the opportunity to declare victory based on premature results.
On September 17, the National Task Force on Election Crises—a consortium of election experts and academics issued a critical letter to the National Election Pool (which includes ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN), Fox News, and the Associated Press urging them to detail how they were going to handle Election Day reporting.
"We know that there is a furious race to call the winner in every election cycle," said Task Force member Rajiv Chandrasekaran, "[b]ut this year needs to be different."
Click to AUTOMATICALLY sign the petition: No premature calls on Election Night that could present misleading returns. We must have accurate and complete results.
Sign the petition
Our message to the national Election Pool:
The 2020 presidential election is highly unusual. A record number of voters will be casting absentee ballots, which suggests that any early Election Night numbers of in-person voting will be highly irregular, incomplete and inaccurate. You must commit to no reporting on exit polls, no big boards, and absolutely no presidential calls until all ballots are counted.
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Keep fighting,
Paul Hogarth, Daily Kos
Daily Kos, PO Box 70036, Oakland, CA, 94612.
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