If I recall correctly, calling the states was based on media "exit polls", not on actual election results. If someone asked me something like that as I exited, I'd give them the wrong answer ON PURPOSE and giggle to myself as I did. Who I vote for is my business, not theirs. The actual results ought to be reported, not exit poll results. Cynthia Bridges-Fowler MIS Operations Analyst IMC Salt, Inc., a division of IMC Global [log in to unmask] http://www.imcsalt.com >>> Glenn Koster <[log in to unmask]> 11/28/00 02:55PM >>> Michael, It also includes Kansas - which had no real exciting races except the presidential race. There were 2 house districts up for grabs - but they have been "Republican" for so long the Democrats decided not to enter the races. There were no statewide races. Every state senate seat and every state House seat were up for grabs... but only 10% of those were "contested" races. They called Kansas for Bush before the polls even closed in my area - over an hour before the 8 western most counties closed the polls. A similar situation occurred in Florida, I believe. I think the first indications that Florida was "leaning Gore" came around 7:20 (40 minutes before the western polling places closed) - and they were based on 0% of the precints reporting. Come on... even you have to agree - that isn't reporting, it's "making the news up". Interestingly enough, the voter turn out in those western Kansas counties was approximately 35% of the registered voters. In the rest of the state we beat the national average by a long shot... averaging 68% of the registered population voting. Granted, it would not have made a tremendous difference in the overall popular vote, but it would have made some... and likely in favor of Bush too (since Kansas has gone Republican by a wide margin every year since Kennedy)! Conservative estimates would guess that Bush lost about 2,000 votes in the popular vote tally because of the timezone factor in sparsely populated western Kansas... Now multiply that my the tens of thousands when you consider the effects of even a 10% decrease in voter turnout in an area like Tallahassee. As for getting the votes counted, I am all for ensuring that ALL VOTES must be IN the county clerk's office by the close of business on election day (not 10 days later). This would ensure that a speedy count could be completed. It would also eliminate any issue of "postmarks". I don't really favor nationwide simutaneous polling hours because of the reasons that you mention, but it would eliminate much of the biased reporting that occurs based simply on "exit polling" and would eliminate the "west coast" factor. Glenn