Inside and Evote are among only a few online organizations that are running with the early results, which largely indicate that the presidential election is still very close. The site stepped in to help out the Drudge Report, run by Matt Drudge, whose Web site has been down all day. The civic argument that journalists can't reveal information because it'll depress voter turnout doesn't apply here. We can make the argument that this information will increase voter turnout. Exit polls are questionnaires developed by Voter News Service, a consortium of the TV networks, cable news channels and the Associated Press.
Voters fill out the polls as they leave the voting booths.
Based on the answers, the news service tries to predict a winner. An early poll published by Inside showed Democrat Al Gore in front of Republican George W. Bush in Florida, a state with 25 electoral college votes. Early polls also showed Bush narrowly in front in the popular vote, with 48 percent to Gore's 47 percent. In the 1980s, the TV networks promised to keep election results quiet after politicians in the West began complaining loudly that declaring winners before all polls closed depressed voter turnout in states like California, Washington and Oregon. For that reason, Slate decided to back away from plans to post early results on Tuesday, according to its Web site.