Fox News Elects Barack Obama President

Yes, it's true! Fox news, the TV network that prides itself on being fair and balanced, just within the hour, was the first of the news organizations to declare that the state of Ohio and its 20 electoral votes have been won by President Obama when only 911 votes separated the 2 candidates, President Obama and Mitt Romney with 20% of the vote still to be counted. Karl Rove, who was the mastermind in steering George Walker Bush successfully through two presidential campaigns in the years 2000 and  2004, suggested that it was unwise for Fox news to “call” the state of Ohio under those circumstances.

A call was made to the collection of "experts" who made this call and Michael Barone, one of them, was asked to come and appear live with Karl Rove and explain what their thinking was in calling the state of Ohio so early in the vote count for the president.  Karl Rove simply suggested that it would have been more professional to have waited a bit when so many votes were still uncounted.  Mr. Barone countered that their experts, including himself, had looked at the counties and precincts still outstanding and using statistics from the 2008 election came to the conclusion that a further account of the outstanding votes would certainly give President Obama sufficient votes to put the state of Ohio in his column. So the decision made by the experts was not to change their decision and thus 20 electoral votes were counted for president Obama which took him past the necessary 270 electoral votes needed to ensure his retention of the presidency.

It seemed incongruous and unnecessary to call the race so soon. When a race is called too soon it can happen, as happened in the year 2000, when John Kerry was declared president and overnight further votes came in and switched the decision to George W Bush. Another reason that this quick decision can be called unnecessary is that it can influence further counting in states not already called and more importantly such a decision can arrest further counting in the state of Ohio itself. When Fox news switched to one of the precincts in a County favoring Barack Obama, a comment made by Megan Kelly, one of the very sharp conservative journalists, to say “they don't look like they're doing any further counting”. While they may have been too engrossed in watching the victory celebration by Obama supporters, it gives one wonder about how earnestly they eventually will count the rest of the votes. Since Fox news has not only called the state of Ohio for Obama, but has called the presidency for Obama, what would be the urgency to count any more votes?

“One man, one vote!” Has been the battle cry of Democrats in the previous extremely close elections of 2000 and 2004 which George W. Bush won. Surely the rest of the votes will be counted and we will see who won the state of Ohio. Probably it will turn out to be president Obama; how embarrassing it would be for the "Fox news experts" to find out that Mitt Romney actually got more votes and won the state.  But this would not be necessary to demonstrate the "egg on their face" in taking this imprudent action.

I would love to see Mr. Romney win Ohio and the yet uncalled states of Virginia and Florida and end up being the actual new president of the United States. But whether this happens or not, my belief that Fox news has done its ” fair and balanced” approach immeasurable harm.  Can it be that their real reason for calling Ohio early as they did was to try to be the first to call the election of the president and not simply a reasonable, intelligent, fair and balanced call?

At least in my mind they showed little regard for the rights of voters to see the impact of their votes in an extremely close election. Their so-called "expertise" and "intelligence" trumps these voter rights, showing themselves as"elites" lacking the wisdom and common sense that people in such a position should extol. Shame on Fox news! Shame!