FC: How the Net gave the right Florida count (& why to read politech)

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

The politech message 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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