TV Plans to Mess With the Iowa Vote

The TV networks never have learned the lessons they should have learned from the Florida fiasco in 2000. Their early (and inaccurate) reporting of the vote in Florida led the way to the long standoff that followed and created the many "Bush stole the election" myths that have fueled the wacky left since then.

Reports are that once again the networks, overly anxious to report a winner, will have entrance polls in Iowa (instead of the usual exit polls):

"Instead of waiting for actual votes to be counted on the night of the Jan. 3 Iowa caucus, a consortium of the major TV networks and The Associated Press will conduct an entrance poll to measure how people say they will vote," The Politico reports.

"Those results will be broadcast long before the official vote is announced and, in some cases, before the voting is finished."

Key caveat: "The entrance poll has a greater chance of reflecting the official results on the Republican side than on the Democratic side."

There is a great opportunity for mischief in all of this. Because the vote on the Dem side is expected to be close, and because of the weird caucus format, it's quite possible that someone may enter the caucus planning to vote one way and end up voting another, which renders anything they told the pollsters useless and potentially harmful if those results are reported before the caucuses end.

And, there are always those who will protest the entrance polls by giving the pollsters bad information and thus making their predictions useless, though still capable of influencing results. If I were the Secretary of State in Iowa I would seriously consider banning pollsters from the caucus sites to try and keep them from unduly influencing the final vote.