Tuesday, November 02, 2004

Dah! I can't believe The Washington Post. That paper has apparently already forgotten what contributed a large portion of the Florida fiasco of 2000. In the last election, news agencies around the country called the state at 7 p.m. Eastern Time for Al Gore, even though polls in the Florida panhandle (which goes by Central Time) were open for an hour later. Reports indicate that voters in that largely conservative area left before voting when they heard the state tally was over.

Now The Post is listing Florida polls as closing at 7 p.m. Eastern Time. ABC correctly lists Florida's polls as closing at 8 p.m. Eastern.

Hopefully other news organizations aren't making the same mistake. And hopefully none of them will prematurely call Florida or any other teetering state one way or the other. But for some reason now it wouldn't surprise me if they did.