Berlin - Germany is considering making election-day exit polls illegal, after forecast results were leaked in advance after last Sunday's regional elections via the Twitter social networking website. Under German law, releasing an exit poll before voting has closed is deemed a breach of democratic practice - because it might inspire people to cast sympathy votes for likely losers or reduce inhibitions against protest voting.
Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries called Wednesday for a review of whether exit polls were necessary. They are commissioned by television channels to give a head start to the news an hour or two before the first vote-counting projections become available.
"It would mean we would not have the election result at 6:15 pm but perhaps at 8 pm. That would not be a huge blow to democracy," she said on Deutschlandfunk radio.
Exit polls are compiled by asking a selection of voters outside polling stations how they have cast their ballots.
Sophisticated mathematics then yields a forecast, which is usually computed four or five hours before the polls close. It is sent to television news desks, but withheld under an embargo.
Vote-count projections, on the other hand, use the same mathematics, but are based on partial counts of the actual ballots at voting stations by neutral election officials after the voting ceases.
Germany uses paper ballots cast into boxes that are locked till the polls close at 6 pm. Exit polls were leaked via Twitter messages on Sunday, when legislative elections were held in three of the 16 German states.
The data that circulated on Twitter was accurate, indicating it must have come from one of the hundreds of people in news organizations with access to the exit-poll data. Twitter enables users to spread an anonymous so-called "retweet" to thousands of "followers."
A deputy speaker of Germany's parliament, Katrin Goering-Eckardt, a Green, also called for a ban on exit polls, saying the media should put up with a two-hour wait on election night before receiving vote-count projections.
Election officials have voiced concern that the September 27 federal general election in Germany might be challenged in court as not free and fair if the TV companies' data is circulated anonymously.
