Burriss: What's new about elections?

By LARRY BURRISS

In case you hadn't noticed, an election is coming up real soon, and we've been inundated with political advertising, polls, predictions and projections. We've seen posturing by incumbents, candidates and assorted other "wanna-be's," all vying for our attention.

But you know, if we've said it here once, we've said it a dozen times: so what else is new?

In 1916 Lee de Forest, considered one of the fathers of radio, broadcast the Charles Evans Hughes-Woodrow Wilson election returns, and predicted a Hughes victory. Of course, there was plenty of blame to spread around, since de Forest was getting his news from the "New York American."

Four years later, in 1920, KDKA, Pittsburgh, began the first regularly scheduled broadcast by reporting the Harding-Cox election returns.

In the 1948 election, the Chicago "Daily Tribune" made one of the worst election-story mistakes of all times when it ran its famous, or infamous, "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline. Most of us have seen the photo of a gleeful Harry Truman holding up the erroneous newspaper.

Then there are the endless polls. We've learned how the young compare to the Presby-terians, how the old compare with workers, how students compare to taxi drivers and how farmers compare with red-heads.

And through it all, both candidates deny the polls are valid, while with every tick in the percentages we see changes in campaign strategy. You know, I bet we could save a lot of trouble if we just picked a random day, and said whoever is ahead in the polls is the winner.

Come next week, maybe we can get back to some serious media, like big time wrestling and the comics. But, you know, I wonder if anyone will notice a difference.

So, as we finish this election season, let's not take all the polls and predictions too seriously. After all, the only poll that will really count is the one done by the general public, on Election Day.