Minnesota polling stations: The final frontier

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ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, CNN and the Associated Press are banding together to eliminate the last state in the union that restricts their ability to conduct exit polling: Minnesota. Minnesota’s secretary of state and attorney general are named in the suit, which objects to a 100-foot “exclusion zone” about polling places. It’s not even the 100 feet so much, says AP, as a new technique of measuring where it begins. No longer is it from the actual poll booth. Now it’s calculated from the door of the building that contains the booth. The journalists say that the zone damages their ability to conduct an accurate poll in a number of ways and is in violation of 1st and 14th Amendment rights. Such laws have been struck down repeatedly in recent years. The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction to bar the zone for 2008, and will seek to overturn it permanently thereafter.