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(VOTER NEWS SERVICE STILL DOESN'T WORK!)
(And these are the guys counting our votes nationwide???)

Voter News Service Tests Poll Info.

Mon Nov 4, 9:20 PM ET

By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer

NEW YORK (AP) - Hours before Election Day, Voter News Service said Monday it still hadn't worked all the bugs out of a new system designed to provide media organizations with exit polling information from voters.

As a precaution, NBC and CBS last weekend began conducting their own joint poll of voter attitudes about the midterm election.

VNS, a consortium consisting of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox and The Associated Press, counts actual votes and also conducts exit polling in certain precincts. That information is used by its members to project winners in individual races on Election Night.

The consortium completely rebuilt its system in response to the 2000 election, when television networks twice used its information to make wrong calls in the decisive Florida vote for the presidential election.

VNS has expressed confidence in its ability to tabulate the votes on Tuesday, though its vote counting process had never been tested in its entirety. VNS members have access to a second, independently conducted vote count by the AP.

VNS also plans to use exit polling of how citizens voted, together with the actual vote count, to help project winners and losers.

Where the system has run into trouble is its attempt to tabulate the results of questions that reflect why voters cast their ballots as they did. VNS has yet to complete a full test of a national voter survey, said Ted Savaglio, VNS executive director.

The consortium will continue to test the system into Election Day, he said.

That information is considered vital to fleshing out the reasons behind the electorate's vote, and is of particular importance to the 19 newspapers that have contracted with the consortium for that information.

The nervousness of some media members about the system was reflected in the new CBS and NBC poll, which gathered voter attitudes about issues Saturday through Monday.

"We remain hopeful that VNS will provide the national poll," said NBC News spokeswoman Barbara Levin. "However, as a precaution, NBC News has been doing our own national polling and we are prepared to use that information."

CBS News spokeswoman Sandra Genelius described the new poll as a backup. CBS has considered all along that the rebuilding of VNS would be a four-year process and that the system won't be as complete this election.

"The parts that we are confident in, we'll use," she said. "The parts that we are not confident in, we will not use."

ABC News also said it was prepared to go on Election Night without VNS exit polling information. "Any information about which we have any doubt will simply be set aside," spokesman Jeffrey Schneider said.