Media around globe allowed to broadcast unofficial results

LAHORE: As the October 31 local bodies elections in Punjab and Sindh have almost approached, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), probably as an ‘after-thought,’ has asked the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) at the eleventh hour to ensure that no media house is allowed to broadcast the ‘unofficial and unconfirmed’ results of the upcoming ballot exercise, a move that is seemingly quite surprising because in today’s modern world gifted with all sorts of mass communication modes, even where there is a ban on declaring these unofficial results, quite authentic numbers keep leaking out once the last vote is cast.
An extensive research exercise undertaken by the “Jang Group and Geo Television Network” in this context reveals that the recent ECP guideline, aimed at getting the national media houses barred from broadcasting the ‘unofficial and unconfirmed’ polling results, is similar to what is currently in place in the sham democracies and dictatorial regimes of the down-trodden Africa.
This is what Elizabeth Blunt, who has served as an Election Observer for the Commonwealth and the European Union (EU) and has reported on African elections since 1979, wrote just a few days ago in the October 27, 2015 edition of the BBC News: “Results from Argentina, Guatemala and Poland were announced within hours, but election officials say results from Tanzania, Ivory Coast and the Congo referendum will take several days. Everyone hates a slow election process. It’s not just the voters and the candidates, desperate to know the results.”
She had maintained: “It’s also the election staff, who probably got up before dawn to prepare the polling station, worked all day running the voting, stayed up most of the night counting the ballots and then had to take the results to a central point and wait for hours, sometimes days, to see their results safely received and entered into the system.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo capital Kinshasa in 2011, I remember presiding officers at the tally centre, fast asleep on top of their sacks of ballot papers; in Nigeria the same year, I watched as the Edo state election commissioner, red-eyed and grey with fatigue, waited for the last results - carried by canoe and motor boat - to finally arrive from the creeks of the Niger Delta.”
Elizabeth had observed in her article that the problem was not a lack of technology, as the United Kingdom still used the most primitive of voting systems - paper ballots, physically carried to the counting centre and counted by hand.
She had opined: “But the UK, like Poland, which voted at the weekend, and India, the biggest democracy of all, has a big advantage.
It’s a parliamentary system, so the election in each constituency is complete in itself and can be declared immediately; there is no need to wait for results from the whole country to know who the next president will be. Apart from Ethiopia, most African countries have presidential system, that is inevitably slower. The other advantage the UK has is one of trust. Where there has been very little past fraud, there is no need for time-consuming safeguards. Polling officials could simply phone their result in to the national election commission, and no one would doubt them. But unhappily that is not the case in most of Africa.”
Elizabeth cited precedents where from Nigeria results from one city had to be brought physically to another so that the commissioner concerned could see that the results sheets had not been altered and all the party agents had signed that they were correct.
She had observed: “No wonder the process takes time. And physically transporting results is not foolproof. Sometimes the results that arrive are not the same as those which left. In Congo, the EU noted that the results its observers had seen in Katanga province were not the same as those later declared in Kinshasa. So that’s why conscientious officials slept on top of their ballot papers. Attempts to speed up the process with modern technology have not been a great success. Malawi bought a sophisticated electronic transmission system for its elections last year, but it was so sophisticated that most districts could not get it to work. The fax system used as a back-up collapsed under the strain, and in the end, after days of delay, the results were hand-carried to the national headquarters.”
The BBC had further quoted the election observer for the Commonwealth and the European Union as saying: “Mobile phones have been a game-changer. Political parties and local observer groups can now run their own parallel counts. Because they trust their agents, local results are simply phoned in to the national headquarters. Typically these parties and civil society organizations know the election result long before it is officially declared. This can be an effective check on fraud, but where people think they already know the result, yet there is no declaration, they get suspicious. Even where there is a ban on declaring these unofficial results, eventually they begin to leak out.”
Research shows that during the May 2015 Nigerian polls, despite a ban on declaring “unofficial” balloting results, voting from some of the 120,000 polling units around the country had been posted on social media by polling volunteers keen on maintaining a transparent process.
In August 2014, Zimbabwe had criminalised unofficial announcement or publication of poll results under Section 66 A of the country’s Electoral Act, under which, any person, organisation or political candidate found guilty of unofficially declaring general election results before they were officially announced, could face a fine, a one-year jail-term or even both.
But “unofficial” election results kept finding a place on the social media. In India, according to Section 64 of the 1951 Act, votes are counted by or under the supervision / direction of the Returning Officer of the constituency. When counting is completed, the Returning Officer declares the result as per provisions of Section 66 of the same Act.
But, just to quote one example, unofficial forecasts during the 2014 Indian polls were a common sight on all forms of media.
The May 16, 2014 edition of the Daily Telegraph had stated: “Unofficial forecasts from India’s television news channels indicated that Narendra Modi’s wider National Democratic Alliance had already won a clear majority with 315 seats, with the BJP alone winning 271 seats - one short of an absolute majority without the support of its coalition allies.”
The prestigious British newspaper had published this story when Indian officials were still counting more than 550 million votes cast and it was before the official announcement of the results that the Indian stocks had hit record high on pro-business Modi win.
By the way, before the results were formally announced, the outgoing Indian Premier Manmohan Singh had congratulated his successor (Modi) on phone.
Similarly, “unofficial” election results are announced by British media houses soon after the last vote is cast, despite the fact that there are strict rules about what broadcasters can and cannot say on the polling day.
The May 7, 2015 edition of the CNN states: “In the UK, television and radio shows are forbidden from discussing campaign issues, talking about polls or dissecting individual candidates until the polls close. The British rules are enforced by the Office of Communications (OFCOM), which regulates TV and radio broadcasters. They are designed to ensure impartiality of political coverage and to prevent broadcasters from swaying public opinion as Brits go to cast their votes. In practice, the regulations mean that any content that could be reasonably seen by a viewer or web surfer in the UK should avoid direct discussion of candidates or issues or poll numbers. Existing content does not have to be taken down, but broadcasters must be careful not to infringe on the rules by posting fresh web content.”
The CNN had added: “Companies with websites seen in the UK and elsewhere in the world — including CNN International — also have to figure out how to avoid breaking the rules. Journalists cannot discuss the strength and weakness of a particular candidate on polling day. Although the regulations do not cover social media, reporters based in the UK still have to be careful. Tweets, for example, could be problematic if they are embedded in a broadcast outlet’s website. The rules do not prohibit foreign correspondents based in Britain from talking openly about the election — as long as their output could not reasonably be seen by a British viewer. Since the OFCOM rules do not apply to newspapers, with just a few clicks, voters can get lots of prohibited broadcast content — last-minute polls, outspoken commentary and articles savaging the top candidates and parties — on newspaper websites.”
In the United States, where candidates frequently campaign on the election day itself by even phoning into radio shows or participate in television interviews in swing states late into the day as they try to drive the maximum number of voters to the polls, all media outlets can broadcast ‘unofficial’ results once the polling is over.
According to CNN, American journalists are not prohibited from interviewing voters at polling places and asking them how they voted. That would be seen as an attempt to shape the outcome of the election.
Coming to the phenomenon of Exit Polls, most countries permit this practice, though laws govern their publication and broadcast timings.
Exit Polls are common throughout the world-although it is prohibited by law not to announce the outcome of this exercise before the polling is closed.
One finds Exit Polls being conducted everywhere on the planet—-in India, United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Canada, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Czech Republic, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Central Asian Republics, the downtrodden Africa and Egypt etc.
This phenomenon was invented by a Dutch politician, Marcel Van Dam.
In the United States, Exit Polls are not concerned with the intended vote, but are based on the answers given by voters selected at random after they have voted.
The American authorities, which have funded Exit Polls in Eastern Europe in the past to detect fraud, only to help successfully overturn election results in Ukraine, Serbia, and Georgia, have officially entrusted the Edison Research since 2004 to provide election projections and analysis for the media houses that comprise the National Election Pool.
The American media organizations part of this pool are ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, NBC and the Associated Press.
Those outlets have agreed not to publish or broadcast that information until polls close, because they don’t want to influence those who are yet to vote or are still deciding whether to vote.
But controversies still surface.
For example, on November 4, 2014, Fox News was alleged to have broadcast Exit Polls from the New Hampshire Senate race almost two hours before polling had closed in that state.
This was a clear violation of agreed-upon rules by the media companies that commission the Exit Polls.
Fox News had disputed accusations that it broke the rules. Its Executive Vice President said the channel was permitted to report exit poll results as long as it did characterise the outcome of the race, which it did not do earlier that evening.
The Edison Research claims it employs thousands of people on one single day to administer and report hundreds of thousands of interviews and then deliver the data in real time.
For a national election, almost 3,000 people are required to do the job at Edison Institute.
This includes Exit Poll interviewers, telephone operators to take their calls at election headquarters, reporters at the sample precincts to get the vote, developers to programme the computers, systems specialists, election researchers, technical support at all sites, analysts reviewing the computations, support staff to manage the exit polls and management of the project
All questions asked on state and national questionnaires are prepared by the six members of the National Election Pool.
Its staffers interview voters after they have cast their votes at their polling places. A sample of precincts is scientifically selected to collectively represent a state or, for the national exit poll, the nation.
An interviewer randomly gives every nth voter exiting the polling place a questionnaire to complete. There are questions about demographics such as gender, age, race and issues related to the person’s vote choice in different contests.
Precincts are selected as a stratified probability sample of each state. The purpose of stratification is to group together precincts with similar vote characteristics.
A recent past election is used to identify all precincts as they existed for that election. The total vote in each precinct and the partisan division of the vote from this past race are used for the stratification. In addition, counties are used for stratifying the precincts.
The total vote also is used to determine the probability of selection. Each voter in a state has approximately the same chance of being selected in the sample. However, the sample size may vary from state to state.
Projections of a winning candidate are only made after all the polls in a state are closed and when the best model estimates show a clear winner. There are no projections before the last polls in a state are closed.
A sample of absentee/early voters is interviewed by telephone shortly before the election. Edison combines the results of these absentee/early voters’ interviews with the Election Day interviews in the survey results reported by the National Election Pool.
Projections are made by Edison and transmitted to each of the NEP members and subscribing news organisations. Each of the members has its own analysts who review the Exit Poll results and the tabulated data as it is collected.
Each news organisation makes its own decision about what to report to the public. All decisions are made after careful review by the analysts and are not automatic decisions made by a computer.
Edison provides exit poll analysis and projections for President, U.S. Senate, Governor as well as selected U.S. House, state referenda and initiatives.
This esteemed institute has so far conducted political exit polls in countries such as Azerbaijan, Taiwan, Georgia, Venezuela and Iraq, while its global clientele includes countries like Abu Dhabi, Argentina, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dubai, Egypt, England, Finland, Republic of Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, India, Iraq, Republic of Ireland, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mexico, Morocco, Northern Ireland, Pakistan, Russia, Scotland, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tunisia, Ukraine and Wales.
It works with both international media and civic organizations to provide election analysis and deliver a mechanism to help validate the propriety of election results.
Although the Edison Research Institute admits there is a margin of error due to sampling, the news organisations using the Edison data have not made a single mistake for the last few years in deciding a winner in any race.
However, in 1980, an American channel NBC’s early projection of a Ronald Reagan landslide victory, together with Jimmy Carter’s early concession speech, was widely reported to have discouraged many voters in Western states with a three-hour time difference from the East Coast from casting their ballots.
It was alleged that the Exit Polls announcement was based on a sample of just 20,000 voters.
Critics said Reagan ultimately won the 270 electoral votes required for election to the Presidency, thus depriving Carter who otherwise had good support in the West.
After this incident, the American networks did modify their practices somewhat and announced in 1982 that they would not “call” any state until some of the polls had closed there.
In 1984, they announced that they would wait until all of the state’s polls had closed. Their coverage of those elections nonetheless served to further refine and systematize their techniques of exit polling and projecting election results.
Exit polls have also proved wrong in the United States.
During the 2000 Presidential election, media houses were vehemently slated for releasing the Florida polling results prematurely, without taking into account the fact that a part of this state was one hour behind the main peninsula.
During the 2004 US Presidential election exit poll, results indicated a seven percentage point Kerry victory. According to the official count, Bush had won by 3,000,000 votes.
Had votes been cast as voters leaving the polling place said they voted, Kerry would have won by 6,000,000 votes nationwide and would have had a decisive electoral victory
The key explanation given by the US National Election Pools for the discrepancy was that far more Kerry voters than Bush voters had actually agreed to fill out the questionnaires offered by pollsters.
The 2014 Indian elections had witnessed a widespread controversy when the country’s Election Commission had barred media organisations from displaying exit poll results until the votes had been counted.
This was followed by a strong protest from the media that caused the Election Commission to withdraw its statement and confirm that the exit polls could be shown at 6:30 PM on May 12, 2014 after the last vote was cast.
Hence, n India, the publication of exit polls has been banned from the time of commencement of polls until half an hour after conclusion of polls in all constituencies by Section 126A, which was inserted by the Representation of the People (Amendment) Act, 2009.
It may be recalled that ahead of the 2014 election, there were numerous reports that Indian journalists with negative things to say about the BJP or Modi had been pressured by editors and publishers to tone down their coverage, or quit offices.
An eminent Indian magazine “Outlook” had reported: “Reporters are being asked to pipe down; editors are losing their jobs; prime-time programmes are going off air; commentators are replacing vitriol with neutral ink while writing on Modi.”
Another media house had gone on to write: “Resignations from high-level positions at Indian media houses in recent months have been linked to pressure to cover the BJP or Modi in a positive light, including India TV’s Editorial Director and a former Editor of Open Magazine, a former Editor-in-Chief of the Hindu newspaper, whose apartment caretaker was assaulted in Delhi— reportedly for the editor’s outspoken comments against the BJP.”
A “New York Times” correspondent in India had written: “I am skeptical of the media stories that predict an outright victory for the BJP, in part because of the drop in the freedom of the Indian press over the last 10 years. Reporters in the Hindi-language media I spoke to privately didn’t doubt the consolidation of support for the party, or Mr. Modi’s charisma, but they felt, as I do, that the riots that took place in Gujarat in 2002 during Modi’s watch as chief minister have left their mark of distrust and fear, diluting some of the enthusiasm for the growth he promises to achieve. The possibility of a coalition government is not so far-fetched.”
Exit Polls, it goes without saying, have been blamed in many countries for affecting the election results by influencing those voters still yet to vote. And although it is permissible in most countries to air or publish Exit Poll results, such findings are always given in form of percentages and “revelations” about the number of actual votes polled or cast, within minutes from the closing of polling time, are of course both impossible and beyond comprehension!
In the United Kingdom, the publication/broadcast of exit polls taken before voting closes is prohibited under section 66a of the Representation of the People Act, 2000.
In case of non-compliance, the publisher or broadcaster concerned would be liable to a fine of up to £5,000 or even a jail term of up to six months.
Following an Exit Poll fiasco in 1992, most British media outlets like the BBC etc are extremely cautious to resort to this practice single-handedly.
While a hung parliament was predicted by Exit Polls, John Major’s Conservative Party had reaped the benefit of incumbency to regain power again in succession.
During the 2005 UK polls, BBC had joined hands with another channel ITV to successfully show quite an accurate Exit Polls that gave Labour Party a two-third representation in House of Commons.
In Australia, the media rarely uses exit polls due to negative past experiences with erroneous results on a few instances. But during the 2007 elections, Sky News and Channel 7 etc had pooled together human resource and other facilities at their disposal to predict an exact 53 per cent success rate for a two-party coalition.
In Sweden, Denmark and Norway, no media organization publishes Exit poll results until all polling stations have closed.
In Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Japan and Holland too, it is a criminal offence to release Exit Poll figures before all polling stations have closed.
In Canada, the Canadian Elections Act, 2000 prohibits the transmission of Exit Polls before the closure of the stipulated polling time.
The Canadian media houses are directed to take into account the polling hours in different time zones.
The government can ban those media houses for three days, which violate laws pertaining to election-related broadcast and publication.
In France, according to February 2002 laws, Exit Polls are banned until the close of voting.
In Czech Republic, no Exit Poll may be undertaken on the day of election in the building in which a polling station has been located.
In South Africa, Exit Polls are banned by Section 109 of the 1998 Electoral Act, according to which, no person may print, publish or distribute the result of any such exercise during the prescribed hours. Electoral courts check non-compliance.
And in lesser-developed countries like Egypt, the Centre for Public Opinion Research had conducted he 2014 Exit Polls—- the constitution referendum Exit Poll and the Presidency elections Exit Polls. This was the first-ever exercise of its kind in the Middle East.
Malaysia and Indonesia hold Exit Polls too, though the exercise is governed by the same global principle of not allowing media to announce anything before the closure of the balloting.