The Covid-19 pandemic has changed how we live our daily lives in so many ways over the last two months. As we’ve seen across the country these changes, great and small, have reached the world of politics and elections.
Recently an ad-hoc committee of scholars and researchers led by professor Rick Hasen of the University of California at Irvine, released a report addressing the challenges posed by holding an election in the midst of a public health crisis and offered recommendations regarding the execution of the upcoming general election. Many of these recommendations are aimed at government officials overseeing elections, but some are addressed to the media regarding their coverage of the process.
As a leading provider of election night results to national and local media outlets, Decision Desk HQ has been monitoring the rapidly changing conditions under which election have been, and are likely to be, held. I wanted to take this opportunity to address two of the committee’s recommendations as they apply to the work we do at DDHQ.
Recommendation #5 involves educating the public on the timing and process of elections as well as the tabulation of returns. This is something we take seriously and will be doing our best to provide information and context from our perspective throughout the rest of the year. As an organization that services as a bridge between the government officials charged with conducting our elections and the media responsible for informing the public about the conduct and results of elections, we feel we bring a unique and important perspective to this conversation.
We’ll be doing more educational pieces over the course of the next few months starting here.
Recommendation #6 is an excellent place to begin our contribution to the discussion: :
It is especially important for the media to convey to the public the idea that, given an expected increase in absentee ballot voting in the November 2020 elections, delays in election reporting are to be expected, not evidence of fraud, and that the 2020 presidential election may be “too early to call” until days after election day.
We wholeheartedly agree about the need for expectation-setting and election education in order to dispel rumors and instill confidence in the process….