Voter News Service

The Voter News Service was an exit polling consortium formed in 1990 by six major U.S. news media organizations. Its mission was to provide results for United States presidential elections, so that individual organizations and networks would not have to do exit polling and vote tallying in parallel.

The VNS included major United States television networks and newspapers:

A possibly unwritten secondary mission of the Voter News Service was to provide election results as quickly as possible on election night—a point which came to haunt the VNS in the 2000 presidential election.

The VNS received intense criticism for its 'flip-flop' calling of the state of Florida in that election. During the course of the evening, it first called the closely contested state of Florida for Al Gore, then George W. Bush, and then as 'too close to call'. Critics argued that the state should never have been called until the state's fate was clear. The Voter News Service also received specific criticism for calling the state of Florida for Al Gore before the polls closed in the Florida panhandle, which was located in the Central Time Zone and heavily Republican. In addition, criticism also came because of the call for Bush which occurred before precincts in Broward, Palm Beach Volusia, and Miami-Dade Counties reported their results to the state which occurred after the networks called the state for Bush well after 2 AM eastern standard time.

The next day it was discovered that 'bad data' resulted in the carnage of the previous night. Due to the Bush margin of victory being less than 0.5% of the total number of votes cast, an automatic statewide machine recount was ordered. In Palm Beach County, a butterfly ballot was used to conduct the election in some precincts. On election day, voters intended to vote for Al Gore instead voted for Pat Buchanan, and the Reform Party ticket. Buchanan received 3,407 votes or 0.8% of the total compared to 0.29% of the total statewide. As a result, unwilling Buchanan voters in Palm Beach county reported votes for Gore in exit polling which resulted in flawed data. Palm Beach County's butterfly ballots

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