HOW TV CAN AFFECT THE OUTCOME AT CLOSE OF PRESIDENTIAL RACE.

Byline: David Kronke Television Writer

Even the tightness of the presidential race may not mean that Californians' votes will matter - the networks' news divisions are expecting to be able to declare a winner before polls close on the West Coast.

``No, not at all,'' Barbara Levin, director of communications for NBC News, responded when asked if she thought the closeness of the race would prevent the network from declaring a winner before 8 p.m. PST, when California's polls close. ``As a news organization, you cannot withhold information from viewers. Your obligation is to report it, but you can't withhold the news. It's important that we report the news and respect the states in terms of how they vote.''

``We do not call any state races until the polls in that state, or at least until the vast majority have closed,'' said Jeffrey Schneider, spokesman for ABC News. ``But it is possible that we could call the presidential election before we call a California House race. If there's a winner that can be called, we're going to make that call.''

All news divisions contacted stressed that much care, consideration and analysis of data goes into deciding to declare the winner of any particular state's election.

Levin points out that NBC has 75 people who work with Voter News Service, a corporation managed by the Associated Press and the major commercial television networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox). VNS will do interviews with 150,000 voters nationwide on Tuesday and couple that information with early tabulations.

``Certainly, people are going to be cautious about it, but there are parameters under which things are callable,'' Al Ortiz, executive producer and director of special events for CBS News. ``We'll be going by exit polling, if we have confidence in it in a given state. If there's a large enough margin in exit polling, we'll weigh the history of accuracy of exit polling in that state's history.

``If the state is close, or if exit polling in the past hasn't reflected the tabulated vote, we'll wait until we have a representative sample of tabulated vote from all areas of the state - cities, suburban areas and other geographical areas,'' Ortiz continued. ``If the tabulated voting contradicts the exit polling, we'll hold off on calling until we get a lot of the tabulated voting. So it's a state-by state decision, but once you've called enough states and tallied up the electoral votes, it's a process of simple math. Once we have 270 electoral votes, we can declare a winner.''

The networks, however, are a veritable bastion of restraint compared to Internet provocateur Matt Drudge, who will publish raw exit poll data over the Internet with no analysis or context or history of reliability from the areas reporting.

Ortiz noted that this election is unique in the number of states with close races. ``In most elections, there are a couple of states that are too close to predict - this year, we have 15 or 16 possible races that are that close,'' he said. ``That may force us to go late into the evening.''

``One of the interesting features of this race is that every possible scenario really is possible,'' Ortiz added. ``We could call it as early as (7 p.m. PST) if Bush gets enough breaks in the Midwest and the East, but if things fall for Gore, we could be declaring him a winner by 11 p.m. (8 p.m. PST). We could be waiting on Florida past midnight to make a call. In an extreme possibility, but one that is still possible, the election may not be callable until the next morning.''

In fact, a representative of one news organization said, not for attribution, that as of Friday, its staff expected that the election's outcome would not be clear until early Wednesday morning.

When national elections are declared finished by the networks, it can have an effect on West Coast voters. In 1996, Bill Jones, the Secretary of State of California, called for the networks to delay announcing winners until 11 p.m. EST, after the state's polls had closed. He cited election results in 1980, when Ronald Reagan was declared to have won the race at 5:15 p.m. PST - the early call reduced turnout by at least 2 percent, he estimated, and voters believing their input had no importance could have affected close local races.

In 1985, the networks had agreed to hold off declaring an early winner in each state until polls in that state were closed. And even though networks may adhere to the letter of the agreement and delay declaring a formal presidential winner, they often blur the line. In 1992, CBS' Dan Rather noted at 6 p.m. PST, two hours before the California polls closed, that ``Bush was hanging by a thread.''

``The urge to be there first with the news is, in this case, irresponsible, and it's a reflection of the debased state of TV coverage of election campaigns,'' said Mark Harris, USC professor of film and television. ``The networks are only interested in winning and losing, not the issues. For them, it's just a horse race - who's up, who's down - and they have a lack of interest in real political issues. When Ralph Nader was mentioned on TV, there wasn't discussion of his issues but only of his role as a spoiler.''

On the other hand, news anchors who try to encourage West Coast voters to the polls can look a little silly. In 1992, when Bill Clinton had a 265-64 electoral vote lead over George Bush, Rather intoned, ``Your vote takes on added importance now. What we have is an election night as exciting as any in memory.''

But, more egregiously, Harris noted that in a tight run-off, a network in its zeal to beat its competition could concede a close race erroneously to a candidate, leading to a flawed electoral vote count giving the election to that candidate - the old ``Dewey defeats Truman'' scenario. Except that by reporting it while polls are still open, the declared projected victory could lead to dejected West Coast voters neglecting their duty and cause a self-fulfilling prophecy.

``In a close race, that intervention could affect the outcome - that's why this is particularly irresponsible,'' Harris commented. ``We have seen how erratic the polls have been. In a close election, the question of how reliable exit polls are is crucial. Election night projections in the past have been reliable, but the margin of error may be too great with any degree of certainty.''

Harris noted that he used to work as a beat reporter for the Associated Press, when it was in a fierce rivalry with United Press International. ``We had a sign up on the wall proudly proclaiming, 'We beat UPI by three minutes on Pope John's death.' What difference did that make, in the scheme of things, that they got that story out earlier?''