“Calling” the winner of a state before the presidential election accomplishes nothing and, in fact, serves to discourage voting in that state. I know many people who voiced support for one candidate or the other but did not bother to vote because they had been told that Illinois had already been decided–it is a “blue” state, so a vote for John Kerry would have been superfluous and a vote for President Bush would have been pointless. Perhaps Bush really could have won Illinois if voters were not told that his defeat here was a foregone conclusion.
If maximizing voter turnout is indeed a worthwhile concern, I see two simple (though extremely unlikely) steps worth taking:
Pollsters and the media should stop the truly pointless exercise of trying to decide the election before it happens.
We should abolish the Electoral College in favor of a direct popular election so that each person’s vote matters regardless of how everyone else in his state votes.
