Day: November 2, 2004

Will the Media Screw with Voters Again?

National Review has a viewer’s guide for election coverage tonight. It raises an issue that I hope they’re wrong about — is the mainstream media going to screw with voters again by calling states for one candidate or another before polls have closed?

If the mainstream media cared about being responsible, it would wait 1 hour after polls close to declare a winner in a state. Why? Because many states like Michigan allow anyone who is in line at the official poll closing time to vote. So when CBS or ABC or Fox calls Michigan for Kerry or Bush tonight at 8 p.m., they’re doing a great disservice by discouraging voters who may be in line from actually voting.

On top of that, of course, often times the media calls a state even before the official polls have closed. ABC, for example, was the only network in 2000 which waited until all the polls had closed in Florida to call the state for Gore, only to have to retract later. Republicans claim the premature calls cost them tens of thousands of votes in the Pan Handle region. Whether or not that is accurate, it was unconscionable for the networks to do so.

Will they make the same mistake tonight? National Review points out, for example, that polls in New Hampshire close at 7 p.m. Eastern, but about a dozen ciites are allowed to extend polling time to 8 p.m. Eastern. If one candidate has a clear lead in exit polling, will the networks wait until 8 p.m. to make a call on New Hampshire? I would hope so, but am skeptical. Same issue in North Carolina, where polls close at 7:30 p.m. Eastern, except that some rural locations can keep polls open until 8:30 p.m.

When those networks decided it was okay to publicly call Gore the winner in Florida before polls had even closed they pretty much expressed the dominant media elitism — that what the media does and how they choose to cover a story is far more important than something as small and meaningless as individual voters. It will be interesting to see if they learned anything from 2000 or if the same sort of contempt for the American electoral process is on display.

Update: This post was modified to reflect that it was ABC who waited for voting to end to call Florida for Gore in 2000. NBC and CBS both called it for Gore while polls were still open in that state.

Siraj Wahhaj

The student paper here has an article about an upcoming appearance by Imam Siraj Wahhaj. The article is pretty bland, describing how Wahhaj is going to lecture about the role of women in Islam and dispel misconceptions that Islam advocates the mistreatment of women.

The article left out quite a bit. For example, it didn’t mention that Wahhaj was named as one of several dozen unindicted co-conspirators in the case of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. It also forgot to mention that Wahhaj testified as a character witness at the trial of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman who was convicted of plotting a campaign to bomb prominent landmarks in New York.

A profile of Wahhaj in 2003 by the Wall Street Journal noted that Wahhaj preferred to remain neutral about whether or not Osama bin Laden was behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The Wall Street Journal quoted Wahhaj as saying, “I’m just not so sure I want to be one of the ones who say, ‘Yeah, he did it. He’s a horrible man.'”

Rahman also has repeatedly called for replacing the U.S. government with a Muslim-style caliphate saying things such as, “In time, this so-called democracy will crumble, and there will be nothing. And the only thing that will remain will be Islam.”

As I said, Wahhaj plans to dispel misconceptions about Islam’s treatment of women. Not sure what he’s going to say, but in the past he has argued in favor of the stoning of adulterers (“If Allah says stone them to death, through the Prophet Muhammad, then you stone them to death, because it’s the obedience of Allah and his messenger — nothing personal.”)

If this is what Muslim organization think is the moderate face of their religion . . .