[EM] advocacy by means of exit polls

[RLSuter at aol.com]

Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

> But the issue, really, was independent analysis of election results 
> using different election methods. For this purpose, it is not crucial 
> what polling method is used; I'd expect that telephone polls, 
> however, would be more satisfactory, because they could be more
> complex.

Wouldn't exit polls have some major advantages as well as some
disadvantages? With exit polls, people are being interviewed in person,
immediately after voting. With phone polls, it will usually be several
hours if not days after interviewees voted, and you have to take their
word that they actually voted.

Another major advantage is that with exit polls, you could ask people
to mark paper ballots that involve the use of different election methods.
That would be possible with phone polls only if everyone being called
also had simultaneous access to the Internet, which right now few
people do.

The big advantage of phone polls is that they are much less expensive.
But if exit polls are going to be done anyway, the extra costs of asking
additional questions that could shed light on different voting methods
wouldn't be more than a fraction of the total exit poll costs. I recall that
the 2004 national exit polls cost about $10,000,000. The additional
costs for doing what Stephen Turner proposed might be only a few
hundred thousand dollars. That may still be more than phone polls
would cost, but it could also provide much better information than
phone polls would.

What is needed is an organization -- a private one or a government
research -- doing extensive research on voting and election methods.
Given the importance of elections, it would certainly be reasonable
to provide such an organization with much more money than is being
discussed here. A budget of well over $10,000,000 per year would
not be at all unreasonable. That's a tiny fraction of the money spent
on political campaigns and only 10 cents or so per voter per year.
Even if the research was done just for a few years, it could easily
provide much more useful data than now exists.

-Ralph Suter