Media consortium agrees to disband vote-counting operation

NEW YORK -- Six major news organizations announced Monday the breakup of Voter News Service, the consortium they had built to count votes and conduct surveys on Election Day. The decision follows two major election-night failures in a row by VNS.

Given the expense of mounting such operations on their own, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and The Associated Press said they were considering other options for sharing vote counts and exit poll surveys.

But it will no longer be VNS, an operation that was created in 1993.

In November 2000, flawed information from VNS twice led television networks to incorrectly declare a winner in the presidential race in Florida, the state that proved to be key to the outcome. The results there were not determined until weeks later after recounts and a court battle that was resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of George W. Bush over Al Gore.

Following that embarrassment, VNS contracted with Battelle Memorial Institute, an Ohio-based research company, to rebuild its system. But in the 2002 election, VNS was unable to provide its members and other clients with results from exit poll surveys. This material is used to help make projections of winners and to supplement the vote count with an analysis of why people voted as they did.

"The project is very large and there was a feeling that the mission of VNS could be better accomplished by working with multiple outside companies," said Bill Wheatley, executive vice president of NBC News.

VNS was headed by former CBS News executive Ted Savaglio and has had about 30 permanent employees. Savaglio could not immediately be reached for comment.

The dissolution of VNS means that the system Battelle was building will not be completed, according to a network executive who spoke on condition of anonymity.

VNS formed in 1993, merging separate companies that counted votes and conducted exit polls. Networks were looking to work together to cut costs -- pressures that are just as acute today.

The news organizations are looking again to separate the operations they merged a decade ago.

The networks are considering asking the AP to provide an upgraded vote count to replace the VNS tabulation, the network source said. AP has long conducted a state-based tabulation separate from VNS. Relying in part on its own numbers, AP was the only consortium member not to declare Bush the winner in Florida early in the morning after the 2000 election.

"We're all committed to providing reliable elections data and it seems obvious that VNS was not the best vehicle for getting that done," said AP senior vice president Jonathan Wolman.

Consortium members are thinking about two alternatives for building a new exit poll operations.

One proposal is from Warren Mitofsky and Joseph Lenski, two veteran polling experts. Mitofsky built one of the predecessors to VNS and helped establish a limited exit poll operation for CNN last year.

"Without sounding arrogant, I think I have more experience than anyone else they can possibly get to do this, with the possible exception of the person I'm partnering with," Mitofsky said.

A CBS executive is helping pull together a second proposal to give the members another option.

The VNS board members, in a statement, said Monday they "are collectively reviewing a number of strong options for how to provide the tabulation of the national vote count as well as state and national exit polls for the 2004 election. An announcement will be forthcoming."

It's considered highly unlikely that any of the news organizations will strike out on their own to conduct exit polling. Besides the expense, the operation is exceedingly complex, as pollsters need to take into account increased use of absentee ballots.

A liberal media watchdog organization, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, objected to the six consortium members continuing to work together despite the failure of VNS.

"We're disappointed that the big, well-heeled media outlets aren't going out and reporting election news independently," said Steve Rendall, senior analyst at FAIR. "As a money-saving issue, they're pooling their resources and giving consumers fewer choices for their news."