The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • A8

a8 saturday, november 1 4 2 0 2 0 the president-elect, as would be routine by now in a presidential election year. murphy, however, had yet to respond as of this writing, despite theWednesday deadline that democrats gave her. stalling of the transition could have pro- found national security implications, as was the case when GeorgeW. bush was sworn in after a long legal challenge of the 2000 election results. the delayed transition caused a slowdown in his appointments of key national security personnel, which an independent commission found hindered his abili- ty to identify security threats before For biden, a smooth transition would also go a long way in helping his administrationmanage the coronavirus pandemic.

his chief of staff, ronald Klain, for example, said that the trump refusal to allow biden to contact federal agencies and to share government re- sources could create problems for vaccine distribution. why if trump administration officials answer simple questions about why they pro- ceeding with the transition, then democrats have to Opinion bostonglobe.com/opinion tion day results would be compared with pre- vious results. Where there was a a precinct, say, in salem, that went republican last time but where the GoPmargin was smaller this time, or even went democratic then the tay- lor method would suggest fresh, perhaps un- seen democratic strength. andwhere there was adorchester precinct with a small democratic margin last time, for example, showing a slight uptick in democrat- By David M. Shribman he television networks called the 1980 election for ronald reagan while americans still were voting on theWest Coast, in hawaii, and in alaska.

they called Florida for al Gore on election night 2000 only to declare GeorgeW. bush the victor 36 days later. and last week they declared Pennsylvania, and the presidency, for Joe biden. Political projections sometimes are prob- lematic and sometimes they form the basis for political dispute. and though news outlets have beenmaking projections for two centuries, themodern sys- tem for predicting election of the verymethods that donald trump and his lawyers say created a fake-news consensus on this has its origin in the newsroom of the boston Globe.

it was Charles taylor remembered for his groundbreaking innovations that welcomed women, children, and immigrants to newspa- per pages with content specifically aimed at set inmotion the contemporary method of election projections. bymeticulous- ly collecting the trace elements of politics, scouring precinct results throughoutmassa- chusetts, entering them on color-coded slips of paper, and then comparing them election after election, taylor became the publisher in 1873, the year after the newspa- per was saw election trends that es- caped the untrained eye. General taylor, a veteran of the Civil War who enlisted with the union army at 16, might be regarded as the founding father of themodern newspaper, adding stocks, sports, and news to the customary fare of the journals of the day. but his most enduring con- tributionmay have been those colored slips for years kept as souvenirs in the news- room but apparently discarded in one of the that he assembled, and then arranged, to help him and Globe edi- tors who succeeded him determine the results of an election. Globe was able to tame themass of in- formation flowing through the newsroomwith specially designed organizational wrote ira F.

Chinoy, a professor at the university of maryland whose Phd thesis is perhaps the most comprehensive examination of news out- election projections. how the taylor systemworked: over the course of years, taylor assembled minute political think of the Globe as a pre-computer that tracked trends inmassachusetts voting down to the precinct level. When the returns flowed in from bay state cities and towns, the elec- ic then the taylor acolytes identified a trend in that direction. Globe reporters would check with town- based sources all night, and editors would keep a sharp eye for areas where the vote count was late, or where it was incomplete, or where there were irregularities. some assump- tions were the number of votes a democrat needed for his margin in boston, for example, or how specific suburbs had to per- form for a republican to prevail.

it was one part art, one part science, one part and a big part judgment. figures, localized, told the political spe- cialist as much as a chart tells a louism. lyons wrote in his 1971 history of the Globe. mustachioed and sporting a slender pince- nez, taylor presided over the projection opera- tion from 1883 through the 1920 election of Warren G. harding as president and Governor Calvin Coolidge ofmassachusetts as vice presi- dent.

he urged caution; it would not do to de- clare a winner at deadline time if the candi- date weremerely ahead, and so the verb often appeared in Globe headlines. but most of the time the street-sales editions of the Globe had unambiguous projected results. as often happens, a candidate runs second in the returns us all wrote Jamesmorgan, for decades the top po- litical savant, does take nerve to keep put- ting out the statement that he will come in first on the full returns in and yet that is what the taylormethod pre- scribed. it allowed the Globe to divert from the pack nationally and resist declaring Charles evans hughes the victor over PresidentWood- rowWilson in 1916. it permitted the Globe to declare senator henry Cabot reelec- tion in 1922, when the consensus was that his democratic rival, ColonelWilliamGaston, had prevailed.

but the greatest validation camewith the triumph of Governor leverett saltonstall, a republican, in 1940, a year when Franklin delano roosevelt and his democratic colleague, senator david i.Walsh, breezed to victory inmassachusetts. that year the Globe system detected telling breaks in the demo- cratic wave. the rival boston Post was sure that attorney General Paul a. dever would win, and said so. saltonstall, and in newspa- per-war terms the Globe, won by about one- quarter of a percentage point.

it would be an- other eight years before dever would finally sit in the chair on beaconhill. DavidM. Shribman, previously the Washington bureau chief for the Globe, is executive editor emeritus of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The history of political projections began with the Charles Taylor A the nation and the world anxiously wait to see if donald trumpwill acknowledge the reality that he lost the presidential election, President-elect Joe biden is go- ing on with his transition plans while he and his team prepare to lead the federal government on Jan. 20.

but because of refusal to concede, and his willingness to go along for the authori- tarian ride, biden has not been receiving national secu- rity briefings and his transition team has not been able to access crucial governmental re- sources to ensure a seamless transfer of power. every day that goes by without the trump ad- cooperation puts the health and lives of countless americans at risk. in order tominimize the chaos and potential damage that trump is unleashing, biden and his party should deploy the one tool they have to ensure a productive tran- sition: amajority in the house, and the chairmanships of com- mittees that can subpoena key ad- ministration officials to testify un- der oath. so far, house democrats have sent letters calling onmore than 50 federal agencies to do their part in laying the groundwork for a new administration by preserv- ing their records, which is already required by law. they have also requested information from administration officials on why there is a holdup in the presidential transition process.

somedemo- crats, for example, sent a letter to emilymurphy, the head of the General services the in- dependent agency in charge of the win- ner of the presidential election, an assessment that would release government resources to the biden tran- sition asking why she has yet to declare biden use their authority to get them to testify before the na- tion and explain their decisions. in other words, time to start issuing subpoenas. representative Gerald e. Connolly, a democrat fromvirginia who chairs the house oversight subcom- mittee that oversees the Gsa, understands the threat to american democracy of delaying the transition. on the edge Connolly said in an in- terviewwith the Globe editorial board.

a very dan- Connolly go so far as to say he is considering subpoenaing anybody at this time, that may eventually as it should. options ought to be on the he said, Forcing trump administration officials to testify un- der oath would be helpful because that would isolate the source of the delay, whichmay well be the presi- dent himself. murphy, for example, should be forced to explain why she has yet to ascertain that biden is the president-elect. is the president himself preventing her frommaking that assessment? another official who would be helpful to hear from is Christopher liddell, the deputy chief of staff who was charged withmanag- ing the transition process. up until the election, lid- dell had beenmeeting congressionally mandated dead- lines for filing reports on the transi- tion plans.

but since the refusal to concede, work has come to a halt. democrats should ask himwhy. even the threat of these kinds of testimoniesmight push officials to do the right thing, because being forced to admit, under oath, that they are preventing a transition from commencingmakes them personally complicit in subverting american democracy. When all the counting is done, biden is projected to have receivedmore than 80million votes, and over 6million votesmore than the sitting president. that will be themost votes anyone has ever received for president in american history.

anyone who is standing in the way of the decisionmust be held ac- countable. the job of Congress tomake sure they are. Congress should start issuing subpoenas now editorial stalling of the transition could have profound national security implications, as was the case when George W. Bush was sworn in after a long legal challenge of the 2000 election results. susan Emily Murphy, the General Services Administration administrator, has not responded to requests regarding transition to president.

boston Globe Photo Files In this undated photo, General Charles H. Taylor (left) sits with Globe attorney Charles T. Gallagher. Taylor became the publisher in 1873..