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Show The Voters ? Teleprompter With one more ejection safely under our belts and the Union, remarkably enough, still intact, there is time to think about a badly needed change in our election law's. At 5:15 EST Tuesday, the first network started to broadcast scattered returns as they came in from Kansas and small precincts throughout the nation. By 7 p.m. results were pouring in from Indiana, Tennessee, Kansas, New Hampshire and Vermont but this was ; four hours before the polls even closed in California, longer still until they closed in Hawaii. By the time the polls closed in Utah the miraculous mirac-ulous electronic brains employed by the networks had already projected Johnson as the winner with . : 340 electoral votes. There is no way to gauge the effect that this could have on the outcome of a presidential contest in states where polls close late. Voters for the apparent victor could decide to stay home from the polls because their vote was not needed. Citizens who planned to vote for the losing candidate might jump on the speeding bandwagon band-wagon or also stay home entirely. THE EFFECT, OF COURSE, might be negligible. But on the other hand, this early reporting and instantaneous instan-taneous projection could be the deciding factor in : states with close races. The states have the Constitutional right to set rules governing elections. But we would suggest that it is time for Congress to pass a law prohibiting announcement an-nouncement cf any election returns until the last poll has closed, |