Around the world, election exit polls are used as a standard of election verification. In the US, media exit poll operators note that their polls are not designed to detect fraud. Rather, their purpose is to project winners of races and provide material for news coverage. (q.v., National Election Pool

National Election Pool

The National Election Pool is a consortium of American news organizations formed in 2003 to provide "information on Election Night about the vote count, election analysis and election projections." See ....

)

Media polls could be used to detect, and even prosecute, fraud if the data is made available. It is true however that the purposes are different, and so the resulting methodologies differ. The purpose of a media exit poll is to strategically poll many precincts to obtain a representative sample for an entire district (e.g., state, city) so election outcomes can be predicted. Most of the polling is done well before polling places close on Election Day

Election Day (politics)

Election Day refers to the day when general elections are held. In many countries, general elections are always held on a Sunday, to enable as many voters as possible to participate, while in other countries elections are always held on a weekday...

 so the exit poll results can be tabulated and presented by the news outlets immediately after the polls close.

Contrast with media exit polls

In sharp contrast, an election verification exit poll’s objective is not to predict election results, but rather to audit or verify the accuracy of vote counts in selected precincts. Therefore, EVEP pollsters focus on targeted precincts, polling very comprehensively so official election results in these targeted precincts can be verified. For example, in the 2006 congressional elections The Warren Poll, sponsored by Election Integrity, interviewed close to 6000 voters in selected precincts in Montgomery, Delaware, and Chester counties in Pennsylvania. However, since verifying particular precinct results is not an objective of media exit polls, typically only 1000-2000 voters are interviewed in an entire state, meaning that relatively few voters are interviewed in any given precinct. Consequently, an EVEP should be considerably more reliable (given that there is no within precinct bias) for the targeted precincts than media exit polling would be since a much larger sample of voters would be interviewed in these selected precincts. Therefore, if EVEP results differ significantly from the actual reported results in the targeted precincts, it would be reasonable to conclude that something is wrong with the official count, especially considering that exit poll methodologies have normally proved quite reliable. Media exit polling has incidentally served to cast doubt on official vote counts, but such polling is not particularly designed to verify election results. Notwithstanding, an EVEP is still a survey and may suffer from the many problems that any survey may experience (e.g. weather, interviewer interaction, distance restrictions, etc).

Interest in exit polls and EVEPs

Exit polling in the United States, as well as in other countries of the world, have been used to question the official results. For example, in the 2000 election in Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....

, Slobodan Milosevic

Slobodan Milošević

Slobodan Milošević was President of Serbia and Yugoslavia. He served as the President of Socialist Republic of Serbia and Republic of Serbia from 1989 until 1997 in three terms and as President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1997 to 2000...

 claimed that he had defeated Vojislav Kostunica

Vojislav Koštunica

Vojislav Koštunica is a Serbian politician, statesman and the president of the Democratic Party of Serbia. He was the last President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, succeeding Slobodan Milošević and serving from 2000 to 2003...

. However, exit polling cast great doubt as to the accuracy of the reported count, suggesting that the vote count had been corrupted. Public and media pressure eventually forced him to concede.

EVEPs as tools to prove election fraud

The introduction of new electronic voting machines, especially ones that produce no paper trails, has caused many groups, including a considerable number of state and national political leaders, to call for remedies to vote count problems. Some have specifically advocated the use of EVEPs, especially in precincts that have historically had problems with fair vote counts. EVEP proponents believe that EVEP findings can be used to challenge dubious official vote counts in court.

However, EVEPs have inherent weaknesses, especially as legal weapons in lawsuits. Obviously, EVEP results are not 100% accurate. That is, they are subject to an error margin, making them very difficult to use to challenge any election results that are close. Also, obtaining a truly random representative sample is problematic since some voters will not respond to the poll. Another serious problem is caused by the various ways people can vote (e.g., early voting, absentee voting, provisional voting, and regular voting). Obviously, EVEP pollsters cannot poll those who vote early or vote absentee. If election board officials merge all the different kinds of voting alternatives, pollsters cannot accurately verify vote counts because EVEP pollsters interview only those who have cast regular ballots, or possibly provisional ballots.