Jail for pollsters!

Our Arctic Ocean reports:

 In the first round of Brazil’s closely watched elections this month, the polls were off the mark. They significantly underestimated the support for the far-right incumbent, President Jair Bolsonaro, and other conservative candidates across the country.

Many on the right were furious, criticizing the pollsters as out of touch with the Brazilian electorate.

That response was expected. What happened next was not.

At the urging of Mr. Bolsonaro, some of Brazil’s leaders are now trying to make it a crime to incorrectly forecast an election.

Brazil’s House of Representatives has fast-tracked a bill that would criminalize publishing a poll that is later shown to fall outside its margin of error.

Obviously not a good law, to put it mildly.

Think if you extended it to economists and GDP projections?

Or public health officials and Covid projections?

The penalty for inaccurate polls should be reputational, not criminal!