Smoking Poll

Oh, and one last thing: Networks May Call Race Before Voting is Complete.

“Our readers are not stupid, and we shouldn’t engage in a weird Kabuki drama
that pretends McCain could win California and thus the presidency,” Mr. Plotz
wrote. “We will call it when a sensible person — not a TV news anchor who has to
engage in a silly pretense about West Coast voters — would call it.”

Does anyone other than these editors and broadcasters themselves feel that "calling" the election at any point provides a useful service to the public? One nice and straightforward way to resolve this would be for all the states to agree to begin releasing results at the same time--say midnight ET, when California starts counting.

While we're at it, why not make exit polling illegal within 200 yards of a polling place, and hold all results until noon or so the following day? The candidates could sit together on a stage in DC, and one by one the governors of each state could phone in the final, certified, we're-pretty-damn-sure results, until they reached 270, at which point the winner gets a 21-gun salute and a kiss from their choice of Miss America or the World Series MVP.