RIGHT SPEAK: Is The Media Trying To Discourage Voter Turnout On Election Day?

Yet another reason to hate early voting: It has eroded the journalistic exit-poll armistice, the agreement to embargo information about how Americans are voting until after the polls have closed. Without notice or discussion, mainstream news sources such as NBC and the New York Times have taken to giving out running tallies on how the vote is going so far. Will all bets be off when it comes to Election Day coverage of exit polls? Or will there be a one-day effort to pretend that, at least on November 8, the armistice still holds?

Glen Stubbe/ZUMA Press/Newscom

This week, Brian Williams was one of the cable hosts quick to report a Florida poll by TargetSmart and the College of William and Mary. The poll had the eye-popping takeaway that 28 percent of early voting Republicans in the Sunshine State had cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton. The poll contained detailed information about the choices early voters had made: "Among those early voters (who were asked which candidate they had voted for), Clinton outpaces Trump by a 17-point margin, 55 to 38 percent." No one actually believes that this represents what the final vote margin will be in Florida, but the question remains: What are we doing, the week before the election, talking about vote tallies?

It's no aberration or outlier. The New York Times also reported on early voting results this week. Noting that in North Carolina "the election is well underway," the Times said that some 40 percent of voters "have already cast ballots, and the data from early voting suggests that [Hillary Clinton] has banked a considerable lead."