Senate Urged to Enact Uniform Poll Closings

WASHINGTON —  Several Western congressmen, complaining that their constituents’ voice on Election Day has been muted by early television projections on the outcome, called on the Senate to pass legislation Thursday that would require all presidential polling places nationwide to close at the same time, starting in 1992.

The proposed legislation has already passed the House but faces an uncertain future in the Senate. At a Senate Rules Committee hearing on a proposal to standardize poll closing times, backers said the plan would eliminate the problem of West Coast voters being discouraged from turning out after they hear returns of East Coast results.

Supporters conceded that the legislation would be worthless unless the television networks stick to promises not to characterize presidential election results until everyone has had a chance to vote.

Networks Reassure Panel

Officials with all three major networks, who support a uniform closing time, reassured Senate panel members that they will continue their policies of refraining from using exit poll data to project a state’s eventual winner until polls have closed there. The policies were adopted after the 1984 election.

Last month, however, NBC projected that Michael S. Dukakis “may well be headed for a victory” in the New York primary more than two hours before the state’s polls closed. The projection was “an inadvertent aberration,” Thomas B. Ross, senior vice president of NBC News, told the Senate committee, and he promised “it will not occur again.”

Senate panel members failed to press NBC for a full explanation of this apparent policy violation. Sen. Brock Adams (D-Wash.), a Rules Committee member who is leading an uphill Senate battle for the uniform poll closing, said after the hearing that he accepts NBC’s explanation but warned: “If it happens again, all hell will break loose.”

“It only takes one network to ruin the effectiveness of the law we are proposing here,” said Rep. Al Swift (D-Wash.), who testified in support of the measure along with Rep. William M. Thomas (R-Bakersfield).

Issue Raised in 1970s

Members of Congress have talked about mandating a uniform poll closing time since the early 1970s in response to charges that voters in Western states were being cheated out of an equal say on Election Day.

The problem has been magnified in the last two presidential elections. In 1984, all three networks had called Ronald Reagan the winner based on their exit polls by 5:30 p.m. PST--2 1/2 hours before many West Coast polls had closed. In 1980, Jimmy Carter conceded defeat at 6:15 PST after early exit polls showed him far behind Reagan.

Under the legislation now being considered by the Senate, polling places in every state, with the exceptions of Alaska and Hawaii, would close at 9 p.m. EST. And once every four years, daylight-saving time for the Pacific time zone alone would be extended two extra weeks, meaning that polls along the West Coast would close at 7 p.m.

Fails in Senate

The uniform poll closing bill passed the House last November but, as in past years, has failed to generate momentum in the Senate.

Supporters have had difficulty mustering enthusiasm because the bill could not feasibly take effect until 1992 even if passed. In addition, the chairman of the Rules Committee, Sen. Wendell H. Ford (D-Ky.), has refused to sign onto the bill, which would require his home state to keep many polling places open an additional three hours.

Representatives of the aviation industry testified Thursday that extending daylight-saving time for the West Coast would only create “confusion, disruption and added expense” for airlines.