Lawmakers in more than a half-dozen states want to do more than just chastise the media for this year’s disastrous election coverage, seeking instead to clamp down on exit polling and the rush to pronounce winners.

In Maine, Connecticut, Georgia, Nebraska and Oklahoma, proposed legislation would keep exit pollsters hundreds of feet from voting booths. A Mississippi lawmaker wants to slap a $1,000 fine on anyone who publishes election results before polls close. North Dakota and Massachusetts are looking to restrict early news of election results.

Some question whether any of the proposals could withstand legal challenges to free-speech guarantees.

But clearly the media has become a target in some states, even as Congress examines the media’s role in causing confusion the night of the election.

“I think the media, if they’re not embarrassed, should be,” said Nebraska Speaker Doug Kristensen, who offered a bill to keep exit pollsters and their questionnaires at least 1,000 feet from voting places.

“I believe that exit polling tends to chill people’s desire to go to the polls, so that they are – at least in our state – directly confronted as they leave the polling place and asked a number of questions, some personal,” he said.

In committee, legislators cut the distance to 200 feet – and then made the proposal part of a comprehensive look at electoral reform. Kristensen said he would continue to pursue the measure.

Twenty-one states already require exit pollsters to keep their distance from voting places – sometimes 25 feet, sometimes 100 feet. Usually, it’s the same or less than the buffer for campaign activity, according to the Federal Elections Commission.

One lawmaker in Maine thinks the practice should be banned entirely.

“Congress needs to act to ensure that voters aren’t discouraged from participating,” said Maine Rep. Kevin Glynn, R-South Portland, whose bill would keep exit pollsters 250 feet away. “At my level in state government, the most I can do is restrict them.”

Other legislators focus on stopping races from being called before polls close. Mississippi Rep. William McCoy wants such a ban and a $1,000 fine for anyone that violates it.

Others had doubts whether any of the proposals would become law, or would pass legal challenges if they did.

“That does get into free speech issues … A lot of that would have difficulties in the courts,” said Rob Richie, director of the Washington-based Center for Voting and Democracy.

But neither is it surprising, said Richie and others who have been working with state legislators on election reforms.

“What you’re seeing is a sense of frustration in the legislatures about this,” said Doug Lewis, director of The Election Center, a nonpartisan organization that works with election officials.

“The answer here is for the networks to quit doing it,” Lewis said. “It’s not that we pass laws to keep them further away from the polls, it’s for the networks to decide to wait until actual votes come in, and report on real news.”

The legislation, “well-intended but misguided,” won’t withstand constitutional challenges, Lewis said.