The state Assembly is taking up a number of bills that could have an effect on how Wisconsin conducts its vote-tallying process.

Legislators are considering a move to keep polling stations from releasing their results until 10 p.m. on the night of presidential elections. The bill is designed to increase voter turnout on the West Coast.

Sen. Cathy Stepp, R-Sturtevant, is co-sponsoring the bill in the Senate and said that voters in states such as California have become apathetic to elections because often the electoral votes in the eastern part of the country have decided the outcome before they get a chance to vote.

“The biggest motivation for me was that with instant access to information through the media, the outcome of elections can be adversely affected,” Stepp said. “For me, the real motivation was making sure voters across the country aren’t adversely affected in terms of voter turnout.”

Rep. Dave Travis, D-Westport, said the author of the bill, Rep. Stephen Freese, had talked to legislators in other Midwestern states considering similar bills. Travis said he had no particular opinion about the bill.

“The idea being presented is that there have been elections where allegedly people on the West Coast stopped voting because they saw how the East Coast had voted,” Travis said.

Donald Ferree, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, said it wasn’t clear how voter turnout was affected by media reports, but tight races are known to bring out the vote.

“Evidence is extremely murky as to what difference it makes,” Ferree said. “It does depend on whether voters think the race is close or not.”

Ferree said citizens are often discouraged from voting if their candidate is far ahead or behind in the polls, and that is the public perception the media can affect.

“Where the sense of whether a candidate is far ahead or behind of course comes from the reports voters have from the media,” Ferree said.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan won the presidential election over Jimmy Carter in an unexpected landslide, and Carter conceded defeat hours before West Coast polls had entered primetime.

“There is some anecdotal evidence that early reporting of exit polls in 1980 kept people on the West Coast from voting,” said David Canon, professor of political science at UW.

Canon said media reports of projected election outcomes might have discouraged Floridians from voting in the 2000 election.

“I think that there is at least some evidence from the 2000 elections that people in the Florida panhandle who were in a different time zone than the rest of the state did not turn out because of the results from the Eastern Time Zone,” Canon said. “But a close race like that can actually boost turnout on the West Coast because people feel their vote matters and their state is more pivotal.”

Charles Jones, professor emeritus of political science for UW, questions whether the bill would have its desired effect.

“To what extent would a California voter say, ‘I will turn out or I won’t turn out, I’m waiting for the exit polls from Wisconsin?'” Jones said.

Ferree said the idea might be a necessary step to preserving the integrity of the election process.

“There is a concern that we don’t want anything interfering with the election process,” Ferree said. “So we tend to avoid both the reality and perception of outside things affecting voting.”

The Assembly is also considering a bill that would make Wisconsin’s presidential primary elections earlier. In the last few presidential elections, there has been a frontloading of states trying to make their primaries earlier to increase their importance in the selection of each political party’s final candidate and to draw in the money spent by the campaigns and ensuing media caravan.

Canon said no state would place their primary presidential elections ahead of Iowa or New Hampshire, who traditionally have the first primaries.