CDR: How the Net gave the right Florida count
Declan McCullagh
declan at well.com
Wed Nov 8 10:40:57 PST 2000
My article you received late last night:
"Al Gore is only 630 votes away from winning the election"
http://www.politechbot.com/p-01481.html
Seems to have been the first article anywhere (3:35 am) to report that
Bush's lead in Florida had dwindled to the hundreds, although CBS at
approximately the same time had mentioned those numbers on the air. The
politech article also appears to be the first to predict a recount.
According to a wire service search, Dow Jones Newswire moved a similar
article three minutes after the politech message (3:38 am), though it did
not mention a recount:
"WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--Vice President Al Gore now trails Texas Governor
George W. Bush by only 629 votes in Florida, throwing the U.S. election
results into question, CBS News reported early Wednesday."
AP had moved an advisory about 20 minutes before (3:11 am) saying that
Bush's lead was in the thousands: "The lead in Florida for George W. Bush
has dwindled to about 6,000 in the vote count." Dow Jones, in an article
distributed at the same time (3:08 am), called the election even with those
thousands of votes outstanding: "In an election that ultimately came down
to a few thousand votes in Florida, Texas Governor George W. Bush has won
the race for the presidency holding off a strong challenge from Vice
President Al Gore."
The networks, of course, had called the election for Bush at 2:17 am, after
incorrectly saying earlier in the evening that Florida would go to Gore.
Part of this mess comes from how mainstream media sources relied on Voter
News Service for their results. For instance, CNN reported at 3:45 am that
the Florida results were 2,890,321 (Bush) and 2,884,261 (Gore). That spread
was still about 6,000 votes.
For my politech article, I used the Net to go directly to the Florida
secretary of state's website. The numbers there were about 20 minutes newer
than CNN had at the same time. To their credit, CBS News apparently
switched to those same numbers, although their hasty calculation of a 629
vote difference was incorrect.
-Declan
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